In September I traveled to Alaska for the purpose of capturing images of the great Alaska brown bear. There are 2 varieties of brown bears. The inland bears, we call them Grizzly bears, live in the interior mountains of the US and Canada and subsist on literally anything they can eat. They grow to 500-700 pounds typically. Coastal brown bears have the luxury of a diet full of salmon, and can weigh easily over 1000 pounds and sometimes up to 1500 pounds.

I flew to Kodiak Alaska then by float plane to a boat off the Katmai area of Alaska. No roads, no trails, just wilderness. I traveled with a group of photographers and two pros as part of a Meunch photography trip. We left the boat by zodiacs and waded ashore in search of bears. The bears at that time of year are feasting on the millions of salmon in the middle of their spawning journey. They frequent the many streams and rivers coming out of the mountains hunting for salmon. There is no problem finding bears and watching them is fascinating. For the most part they ignore people, as they have mountains of salmon available to eat. They are in a frenzy to fatten up before hibernation is necessary. They can consume 70-100 pounds of salmon daily.

The challenge is to capture the image of a bear in the midst of their sprints to catch a fish. Sometimes they are far away and sometimes so close that you can almost touch them. The first time a massive bears comes that close is terrifying. But after a while it is no issue. These images I captured on a Canon R1 with a 100-500 lens. The image were processed in Lightroom and Photoshop. Both the capture and processing were aided greatly by the advice of Richard Bernabe and Cecilia Costa of the Meunch team.