Alaskan Brown bears!

[IPT]

So, I pulled some images out of the few thousand I took for my office blog page. I thought I would share them here. You guys like Alaska pictures, right? I know you like Moose, what about bears?

Yeah, I like them too. Though not really when they are on my hiking trail!

Of course there were lots of things they were a LOT more interested in than me.

 

[Misled]

Way sweet Louis!!!!! My wife is gonna love these pics. We've been trying to see the black bears around here without any luck.

 

[Reef Bass]

Way cool. Good looking pics. I've seen bears in the wild, but never as close as they appear in your shots.

I saw a funny tshirt this weekend with a bear holding a salmon like your last shot, and the caption read "sushi".

 

[IPT]

yeah, my parent are in PA. They have seen a few Blackie's crossing the road but that's about it.

Sushi it was! And Caviar! Yeah, being within 10 feet of these bruins was crazy! Most were much further but there were many that were close.

I have a lot more pics up here: www.iptalaska.com/Pages/blog_pages/blog_page_12.html

 

[Reef Bass]

Within 10 feet?!!! Many that were close??!! You have nads of steel and my respect.

I consider myself an animal guy and am a firm believer in calm energy around animals and I'm not sure I would be able to be so that close.

 

[IPT]

Thankfully that only happened a handful of times! I was preety much froozen so it's not like I could have run anyway! Most were quite a bit further away and it became really obvious that they had no interest in you at all. I detailed my experience on the website page. I'll see if I have time to cut and paste it here. Though I didn't see it apparently one bear came right over to the pad we were on to take a sniff of the shotgun barrel the guide had (it was laying on the ground, nothing chambered). From what everyone else said they frooze too and no pics of the event were taken.

This was a very unique environment where for 40+ years the bears have seen people come in on the same trails, same size groups, they stay in the same place, no one makes fast moves, they have never had human food nor negative experiences with humans. It was almost like we didn't even exist. It was quite odd, and spectacular!

 

[redclay92]

Very good pictures. How long of a lens were most of those shot on?
Red

 

[swjim]

Great shots! I really like the first one, it looks like he's thinking, "I really would like to eat a few of those things but they keep flying away..."

 

[IPT]

Very good pictures. How long of a lens were most of those shot on?
Red

Most of the shots were at about 400mm. I also used a teleconverter at times putting me at 600+mm. Some of these images are cropped to so If I were going again, and I hope to, having some really long glass would be ideal. I often used my 70-200mm too, so I wouldn't want to be limited by one range. They say 400mm is enough, and in a lot of cases it was, but sometimes more is just better!

Great shots! I really like the first one, it looks like he's thinking, "I really would like to eat a few of those things but they keep flying away..."

ha, yeah I wondered if they ever got one or not. I never even saw one go for a bird. The fish were so pleantiful I don't think it would have been worth the effort. I did see a bird or two get pushed by wind currents nearly into a bear and it was pretty funny to see the look on the bear's face when they got that close.

A few others..

 

[Recty]

Very nice pictures, I'd love to go there someday and try my hand at close up bear photography. I took some pictures of a bear on the Kenai river and that thing was 200 feet away and I was still pretty nervous

 

[IPT]

yeah, I was at the camp alone outside one day and a bear was nearby. I was taking shots and he started coming closer and it spooked me. It's much different in a group, especially with a guide who knows the bears and projects a constant calm. It was for sure a top 5 experience for me.