Curious Cub

[Mark Needham]

Curious Cub
Image:

Polar Bear Cub
High Arctic, Beaufort Sea, Alaska.
October 2014.

This wild polar bear cub was photographed from a small boat among some barrier islands in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska. I recently returned from two consecutive trips up there.

Apologies for my lack of activity on BPN recently, but it has been the start of a busy new teaching term here at the university. In addition, I have been slowly recovering after impaling my back on the boat’s anchor while on the last trip to the arctic (I slipped backward on the boat’s deck while photographing and the anchor was up on the deck at the time). Cracked ribs and severely bruised kidneys have made it difficult to sit at the computer for lengthy periods of time. Luckily and most importantly, the camera gear was fine.



Anyway, back to the bears … there were four different females up there with cubs, and this little youngster was by far the most curious and fascinated with the boats. To avoid habituating the bears, we always made sure to back away before the cubs got close to the boat. Wild, not baited, no compositional elements changed.

Equipment:

Canon 5D Mark 3.
Canon 500 f4 Mark II lens.
F5.0, 1/1600, ISO 1600.
full manual mode.
spot focus, spot meter
beanbag with Visual Echoes panning plate.
Post processing:

Lightroom 5.6: double processed the single image (one for the sky, one for the bear) with global adjustments, modest crop, slight rotation.
Photoshop CS6: blended these two exposures using Jay Goodrich’s technique, a tiny bit of additional burning, resized, sharpened, etc. for output.
Nik Viveza: two minor targeted adjustments on the blended exposure.
Nik Color Efex: tonal contrast enhancement.
edited on a color calibrated NEC P241W monitor.

As always, comments and critique welcomed and appreciated!

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Mark - Ouch, sounds like a very painful fall. I hope you are well on your way to a full recovery. This image is a real treat. I love the inquisitive, walking pose with the raised paw. Sharpness and details look great on the bear and I like the layers of the bg. Only thing I might do is try to bring out a bit of detail in the snow. Looking forward to seeing more from your trip.

TFS,
Rachel

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Fantastic image with superb composition, awesome inquisitive pose, great detail and light. Love that BG as well. Hope you get fully well soon!
Cheers,
Sanjeev

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Mark , i am with you ......... as long as the gear is fine.
Sorry to hear that you got injured during your trip , not very nice .
But you got a very nice frame in the end . Like the image as presented with a curious /cute looking cub . Love the color palette you processed . Agree with Rachel about a bit more detail in the snow would be good and take this up a notch .

Hope for a fast recovery for you .

TFS Andreas

[Morkel Erasmus]

Glad to see you starting to post these images, Mark! If Mr Balfour's posts on FB are anything to go by we are in for a jealousy fest
Sorry to hear about your fall and glad that it's getting better...
Just love the low angle and head-on approach here, with the soft light and pastel hues. Only thing I would change is perhaps a VERY slight CCW rotation? It gives the impression of the cub slanting to the RHS but it might be an optical illusion? Image quality is top notch!

PS: get cracking and post some more, you can always process while standing up

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hi Mark!

What a beauty, so well exposed and impeccably processed - I love the colours, the subject's pose, paw raised, eye contact, plenty of attitude there...Great POV. A winner, ticks all the boxes for me, congratulations!

Kind regards,

[Mark Needham]

Wow - as always, you folks are the best - thanks for the great feedback, everyone! Agree with Morkel that a slight CCW rotation is needed. Using the grid overlay, it is just a tiny bit off and I can fix that easily. I will also try to extract more detail in the snow, but I already did quite a bit with the tonal contrast adjustment in Color Efex, and it showed much more detail on the bear's fur than in the snow. It was very windy while I was up there, so the snow was very compact, wind blown, and basically hard ice on top of several feet of snow, so it lacked much detail. That said, I will give it another pass to see if I can extract some more detail. Again, thanks for the helpful feedback!

[Douglas Bolt]

Lovely image. The background is wonderful, as is the bear. Very nice.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Mark,

Nice to see you back, but sorry to hear about the fall. Did a similar thing with grizzly's in Katmai, fell back onto some boulders, the 6ft drop was nowhere near an anchor injury, but bruised/cracked ribs are not much fun, especially if you cough.

A very clean & simple image, but a very effective portrait. Interesting to see the comparison of these PB's compared to the one's Rachel, Anette & I have photographed, as the colours are overall a lot warmer and in keeping with another members images shot in, I think, a similar location (Sid G). I like the head on, raised paw and tight framing, although I hope you have also some wider, environmental shots too. Curious about the F stop, f/5 and spot metering? Yes there is more detail in the snow, your call in leaving as is, or bringing more out, both have merits, I like it as is because all you see is the bear. I could be wrong, but have you opened the eyes up, if you are fortunate to get some light great, but they are so dark/black normally, it can be at times hard to get any detail, form, or coloration out of them.

TFS
Steve

[Mark Needham]

Hi Steve -- Nope, I did not open up the eyes at all, as we had pretty good light that morning (very rare). Yes, Sid was in the same location last year. Yep, I have over 8,000+ images from the two trips - several close up and also several wider view images; some intense action, some sleeping too. Lots of variety, which is nice. In 8 days of shooting, did not go more than 5 minutes without seeing a bear . Shooting as far to the right of the histogram as possible without clipping (following Chas Glatzer's method [my mentor]), hence the f-stop and ISO. Needed to retain high SS given the boat (and bear) movement. I have made some tweaks to the images based on the great feedback below (slight CCW rotation, a bit more detail in snow, etc.) and posted it on FB and 500px just now. Hope all is well!

[Steve Kaluski]

Thanks Mark, yep I think we all follow that method of ETTR, and agree, when shooting from a boat/zodiac a high SS is required. Good to hear you had a fruitful trip.

Funny, just talking at the weekend with someone, planning ahead and I said I wanted to do more PB, but will probably sway back to Africa, however this may start swaying me again...

[Mark Needham]

Yeah, we are doing Africa again on our next trip (next Aug-September) for 5 weeks. May try to do the polar bears again right afterward, depending on cost and availability. If not, will certainly go back for the polar bears in 2016.

[Mike Poole]

Absolutely stunning shot Mark Great head on pose, especially with the lifted chin and the raised paw. However, its the combination of the use of light, low POV and the warm tones in the background sky that raises this up a notch for me.

[Mark Needham]

Thanks so much, Mike!

[Arthur Morris]

Mark, I missed this one then but am glad that I am seeing it now. Sow peaceful.

Are you all healed up?

[Mark Needham]

Thanks, Art! Not fully healed up yet - 2 surgeries over the past month or so associated with the accident. Long story short, I had 3 ruptures in my colon that eventually caused internal bleeding and a week in the hospital (fixed with surgery in late November), a fully fractured rib, 2 bulging discs (1 herniated, which got worse over time and eventually required surgery in mid-December), and some leaking spinal fluid causing numbness down my left leg (fixed with the same back surgery that fixed the disc issues). Now I am in physical therapy and rehab 4 times a week. At least I am recovering and able to spend a bit more time at the computer everyday, but it has been brutal for my work productivity (my day job is I am a university professor) and my photography has come to a dead stop. I plan to get a few images processed in the next month or so, which will be refreshing and enjoyable. Thanks for your kind comments on my image and care for my health, my friend. Hope you had a wonderful holiday season and new year! Cheers!

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Mark. Wow.... It is a good thing that you are still breathing. Hope that you finish healing soon and get back out there to make more images like the one above. See my blog today for a nice surprise.

[Mark Needham]

Wow - thanks so much for the recognition in your blog, Art! It really is an honor, nice surprise, and certainly appreciated. I have many more polar bear images from those two back-to-back trips (including the one here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ibling-Rivalry). Will certainly keep working through and posting more images on BPN once my health gets back on track. In my opinion, BPN is by far the best place for honest detailed critique, and it has helped me immensely in my photographic journey. Thanks so much to you and all of the other wonderful people on here!

[Arthur Morris]

Wow - thanks so much for the recognition in your blog, Art! It really is an honor, nice surprise, and certainly appreciated. I have many more polar bear images from those two back-to-back trips (including the one here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ibling-Rivalry). Will certainly keep working through and posting more images on BPN once my health gets back on track. In my opinion, BPN is by far the best place for honest detailed critique, and it has helped me immensely in my photographic journey. Thanks so much to you and all of the other wonderful people on here!

YAW and many thanks for your kind words. Sibling Rivalry is beyond the beyond good. I will be making a blog post out of it soon.... You had a blessed trip. Now get well soon.

[Mark Needham]

Yep, it was a magical trip. I was up there about 10 days earlier, but minimal snow had fallen and the bears were mostly on gravel and quite dirty. I was a bit disappointed, as I really wanted to try photographing the bears in deep snow. So, when I got home I followed the weather forecast really closely, talked on the phone and email with my boat guide almost daily, and learned that it had snowed every day since I left, sometimes in blizzard "white-out" conditions. But, I saw there was going to be an upcoming "gap" in the weather with possible clear skies (very rare up there where it is almost always overcast with limited visibility), so to my amazement I managed to snag the last seat on the plane back up there, the last room in the lodging, and the last seat on my guide's boat for four days, all at the last minute. I booked this second trip on a Tuesday and two days later (Thursday), I was on the plane back up there (this is a location that usually books out 8-12 months in advance)! The two images you have seen were taken on my last morning up there on this second trip just a few hours before having to jump on the plane back home. Two days later, all of the guides pulled their boats out of the water and ended their season because the sea ice was too thick to get their boats through it. Everything just came together at the last possible moment and luck was certainly on my side! As you know, wildlife and bird photographers certainly need major doses of patience to get the best sightings, but we also need to rush to jump on opportunities at the last possible minute when they present themselves; just go for it, enjoy the ride, and don't look back!

Really looking forward to the blog post and thanks so much for all of your support and encouragement - it means the world to me. Cheers!

[Arthur Morris]

As I said, "blessed." :)