Polar Bear Cubs Sparring
High Arctic, Beaufort Sea, Alaska.
October 2014.
These two wild polar bear cubs were photographed from a small boat among some barrier islands in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska. I recently returned from two consecutive trips up there. These two youngsters had just jumped out of the icy water and started wrestling right next to our boat, causing snow, ice, and water to explode off them when they clashed together. To avoid habituating the bears, we always made sure to back away before they got close to the boat. Wild, not baited, no compositional elements changed.
Equipment:
Canon 5D Mark 3.
Canon 500 f4 Mark II lens.
F6.3, 1/1250, ISO 2000.
full manual mode.
spot focus, spot metered off the snow
beanbag with Visual Echoes panning plate. Post processing:
Lightroom 5.6: standard RAW conversion and global adjustments, slight crop from each side, very slight rotation.
Photoshop CS6: luminosity mask, levels, curves, HSL, selective color, resized, sharpened, etc. for output.
Nik Color Efex: very slight tonal contrast enhancement.
Nik Dfine: targeted noise reduction.
edited on a color calibrated NEC P241W monitor.
Thanks for looking and as always, comments and critique welcomed and appreciated!
Last edited by Mark Needham; 11-17-2014 at 03:10 AM.
Wow - thanks so much for your kind comments, Rachel, Morkel, and Ben! Morkel - this is full frame on the top and bottom; I only trimmed a bit on the left and right sides because there was a big log on the right that was distracting and the extra space on the left and right was taking away from the drama of the bears and flying snow / ice. I also did a very slight rotation (to get the horizon line straight) that caused me to lose a tiny sliver off the bottom. I could, however, try adding some canvas below to see how that would look, but I worry that it would make the horizon line more centered in the frame - I would like to keep the perspective of a bit more sky and less snow to give the image a feeling of "dimensionality" and "height," and help draw the eye up toward the flying snow. I will experiment with it though to see how adding some canvas looks.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. After playing with it a bit more, I took Morkel's and Andreas' advice (thanks guys!) and added 80px to the bottom of the image. Upon closer inspection, I also detected a small error in my mask that I fixed in this RP. WDYT - better?
Great action captured with excellent sharpness! All the flying snow is a big plus. I also like the light and the dark blue background. Outstanding work!
Hi Mark, a great 'commercial' image, be nice for an Xmas card.
Agree on more space below, nice sharpness & love the clarity achieved. Surprised you need to add any NR at 2000, but I would be tempted to do that in LR.
Hey Mark nice to find you have joined in on BPN . This is my first comment for a while and you got my attention with this image. Well done mate - talk about success.
Hi Jaime! Great to see you on here - I did not know you were on BPN! Everyone here is so awesome and I have learned tons from their comments and critique. Thanks for the comments on this image - will be posting it to my other channels (e.g., 500px, FB) in the next day or so. Cheers!
Hi Jaime! Great to see you on here - I did not know you were on BPN! Everyone here is so awesome and I have learned tons from their comments and critique. Thanks for the comments on this image - will be posting it to my other channels (e.g., 500px, FB) in the next day or so. Cheers!
This is da place to be buddy. The advice here is priceless and yes everyone is super nice and helpful. See you on this side of the border hopefully this winter.
Really Nice! An animal I know I will never get to photograph, myself. The Detail is great, love the flying snow from the fighting interaction, just a great image, not much else to say!
Wow, this is another stunner, even stronger than the Curious Cub.... The BLUE is amazing along with the snow. The added canvas on the bottom made it a perfect image. Get well soon.
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Originally Posted by Mark Needham
