Shake it Up!

Shake it Up!

There's at least a few things you can count on in life - taxes and death come to mind. And another "you-can-count-on-it" thing is that when a bear gets out of the water after swimming, it's going to shake like a dog! The trick in photographing one of these "shakers" is to somehow get in FRONT of the bear before it shakes (unless you're into shots of a wiggling bear's butt, not that there's anything wrong with that).

Many of the grizzlies of the Khutzeymateen are found in the estuary (which is at the head of the long Khutzeymateen inlet). That grassy estuary is carved up by many water-filled channels (that vary in width and depth depending on the state of the tide). Which means the grizzlies there end up spending a lot of time swimming - which in turn makes the Khutzeymateen an absolutely GREAT place to see and photograph shaking bears (as well as, of course, swimming bears).

Over the years I've photographed a LOT of shaking bears and in most cases I've experimented with slowish shutter speeds (in the 1/250 to 1/400 second range) in an effort to produce those hard-to-capture "freeze MOST of the action with some blurring of the fastest moving shaking parts" images. In 2014 I decided to depart from my past efforts of capturing those "freeze-blurs" and go for freezing the action. So I whenever a full body shake was a possibility I quickly readjusted my camera's shutter speed to be in the 1/1600 to 1/2000 range.

The results? Well, many were kinda fun - like this one. It's the kind of shot that the subject - which is a recently weaned 3-year old male bear - would probably cringe at if they viewed it (and they'd make you promise not to show anyone!). And, the image shows one thing that always amazes me - when a bear is eating grass and then moves on to do something else (like swimming and then shaking), they almost never lose the piece of grass that's in their mouth. After examining all the shots following this one (right through until AFTER the shake was completed) I can confirm you that the bear never lost that little blade of grass that was in its mouth, and it promptly swallowed it after the shaking was done!

Subject: Young grizzly (Ursus arctos) shaking after a short swim
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR @ 220mm - hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Active" mode.
Exposure: 1/1600s @ f6.3; ISO 5600. no compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Very minor - this is about 90% of full frame

More details about the image - including post-processing information and a higher res version of the image - can be found here on my website:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS: Like all wildlife images on my website and that I post on NPN, the subject is fully wild and completely unconstrained. Besides the potential impact of my presence, nothing has been done to intentionally alter or affect the ongoing behavior of the subject and, of course, there has been no use of any form of bait or other form of wildlife attractants (including vocalizations)