Unbearable

Rachel challenged me to post something in Wildlife, but the first one I grabbed probably should go here.

(Don't steal it -- it belongs to Getty.)

Hi Diane, it took a second for this image to register. A great dreamscape posted on April 1. Well done. Love the bear.

Very cool, nice thought out idea...just got the title.

This is outstanding. I love the the image. Very clever, and very nicely executed !!

Diane - This is great. Very well done and perfect title.

TFS,
Rachel

This has a real impact because -- to me, at least -- it's totally unexpected. Your choice of focal length probably couldn't have been better. I'd crop a bit off the top for composition and to make the bear relatively larger, but it's great just the way it is.

I'm baffled. Is this a composite? Whatever, it is excellent.

Definitely a composite!!

I shot the polar bear at the San Francisco Zoo and even it is a composite. Wandered by this exhibit after getting bored with the other bears and probably let out an exclamation I shouldn't have. Had a 500 (had been going for portraits as the BGs there are very artificial-looking) and had to rotate the camera to a vertical orientation to fit the bear top to bottom in the frame. Shot a very quick pano and set it back to do another one more carefully and the bear moved. But fortunately that pano stitched together well.

The BG was ugly but the bear was lying on concrete with some sandy texture. I knew I needed a BG to put him in. It was foggy, which made it harder. Stopped by the beach to see if I could find a scene but it was really foggy by then. Decided I needed Waikiki or Coney Island, with the bear under a beach umbrella, but wasn't willing to travel that far.

My husband is into small planes and about a week later we flew to this secret location where we sometimes camp (I could tell you where but then I'd have to shoot you...). I've never seen a cloud there and as soon as we got out of the plane (parked just to the left of this frame) this cloud came over with another one in the sky and I knew instantly that's where the bear belonged! I broke fingernails clawing the camera out of the baggage compartment, focused on the sand at the right point before the clouds both moved, and got this shot. The BG is just as shot -- I just dropped in the bear.

Had a major project cleaning up the messy BG behind the bear, though. The bottom edge was easy as the concrete blended well into the sand. I'd like a softer shadow under the bear but this is the way it was and attempts to add more feathering didn't look right.

Diane: Thank you for your explanation of this image. I enjoyed reading about your thought process. It is so interesting to learn how other photographers think and work. Excellent!

Well, now, I'm even more impressed. When I saw the shadow, I still wasn't sure but decided it probably wasn't a composite. Your account of getting what you needed to put it all together was fun to read.

Diane, a wonderful story and a marvelous, imaginative image. And probably a little too close to reality. Well done:S3:

Really fun, and so well executed.