Grizzly Bears in Alaska
Posted on 1st August 2015
Planning is the key to taking a trip to Alaska. Plan what you wish to photograph, research the internet for the best time, and if its grizzly bears you are after, get a guide or visit one of the Bear camps.
We choose to fly into Anchorage, hire a car,drive to Homer and the plan from there. The reason for this was the weather. Its unpredictable and booking a trip to photograph bears 3 months in advance might go totally wrong weather wise.
When on site so to speak, the weather window is a week and therefore you can be reasonably confident of getting it right.
We booked to fly over to one of the many locations where bears fish for Salmon and as the pilot/guide had researched the area we were confident of finding exactly what we went for. Grizzly Bears.
Landing in a float plane, in a remote area we had to walk about a half mile to the bears location. You can't take food and the nearest rest room is a bush. Hopefully you and the Grzzly don't find the same bush at the same time.
We used 80 to 400mm zoom lenses which were more than adequate for the task.
The Grizzly bears were all around us and more interested in eating Salmon than eating photographers, although trying to convince my wife of this proved a little more difficult.
This is just one of the many shots of the bears chasing salmon taken that day with the 80-400mm