The Sea Wolf

The Khutzeymateen Inlet - and the entire Great Bear Rainforest - have become world-renown largely because of the conspicuous presence of grizzly bears. But over the last decade or so another top predator of the Great Bear has come "out of the woodwork" and become better known and sought after by wildlife photographers - the coastal gray wolf. But these "sea wolves" are FAR harder to predictably locate and photograph than the grizzlies - which makes capturing shots of them even MORE special!

We were cruising the Khutzeymateen Inlet via sailboat when our incredibly capable skipper and guide (and wildlife spotter extraordinaire!) spotted this female gray wolf cruising the shoreline in the distance. The wolf was certainly on a mission - it was headed in our direction at a VERY fast trot and we had no time to waste. We did the "fire-drill thing" and scrambled into our Zodiac so we could try to position ourselves to get some decent shots. We had no idea then that the wolf would virtually ignore us and give us multiple great photo ops as we worked with it along about 4 km of shoreline over the next half hour or so. Even now I'm not sure what I enjoyed more - watching the wolf rapidly weave its way along the shoreline over all sorts of obstacles or the challenge of capturing compelling and well-composed images of the speedy wolf from a moving Zodiac under constantly changing lighting conditions!

Subject: Female Coastal Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) posing on shoreline
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern BC coast, Canada
Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 Sport lens @ 300mm (450mm EFL). Hand-held from Zodiac boat. OS on and in "OS1" mode, with OS1 stabilization customized to Moderate View mode; AF customized to Fast Priority AF.
Exposure: 1/1000s @ f4; ISO 640. -1.0 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Almost full frame (less than 5% crop for compositional purposes)

A lot more info about this shot - including a 2400 pixel version it - can be found on my website using the link immediately below.

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

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version (or, better yet, the new detail view) 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).