Polar Bear's night out!

[Gerald Kelberg]

Another in the series of shots from the Polar Bear kill in Svalbard from last May. This image was over an hour into the event - so the seal was now dead and the bear was feeling less hungry; looking around and taking notice of us in the zodiac. He seemed to think we might want to wrestle him for the meal!

The image was made with my Sony A9II, FE200-600mm with 1.4x teleconverter at 840mm. Shutter speed 1/640 sec at f/10 and ISO500.

Lightly processed in Lr - this is almost full frame. Balanced out some of the shadows and background then went into PS to resize and sharpen for output.

Comments and suggestions much appreciated.

Gerald

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Gerald, my first two questions here are:

Why did you shoot Landscape, as the image is crying out to be portrait?
You needed to be about 2-3 steps to your right, the subject would then be bang, symmetrical in line with you IMHO.

Now you may have others in the series Gerald where you shot Portrait and if you did, please RP here.

Light we cannot control, but I find being slight overcast, or in Svalbard, more grey, offers better opportunities in PP as you can extract more Tonal range/depth. Colour look good, I;,m just wondering if you had gone to f/8 ion you would get ear to nose all in, not sure if the nose is just off??????

1/640 from a boat, personally I would go 1/1600 or even 1/2500, you will freeze the action for sure, but the ship won't have turned her engines off, therefore they will be just ticking over and so even standing there is the minutest of vibrations, not that we would feel it, plus with a 45mpx camera (?) at that distance you want to avoid pixel shift. The other factor is, you can't see it with the naked eye, but sometimes I the atmosphere you get this minute crystals witch can also affect the capture.

TFS
Steve

[Gabriela Plesea]

Killer look on this Polar Bear's face and the blood makes it very dramatic. POV is great.

I too wondered why you did not shoot portrait... perhaps you thought you won't be able to include the feet and tried something different instead?

Agree with Steve, SS low for this situation. I have yet to look in PS but to me the face appears quite sharp with some nice detail. In terms of colour the subject's coat looks great.

Enjoyed viewing Gerald, thank you so much for sharing! Wondering what else you have in those folders...bring them on please

Kind regards,

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Steve,

Thanks very much for your comments.

I almost always shoot landscape as I have very few occasions to view images in portrait. That isn't to disagree that it couldn't look good in 4x5 or whatever , just me!

That 2 or 3 steps to my right I would have been walking on water! I had the bear centred in the frame and thought it looked a bit boring, so cropped from the right.

My objective with this image was to emphasise the face and eyes, catching the bear briefly head up without including the seal carcass that was immediately in front of him. I have many other images that include the bear and the carcass - few of the front paws.

Agreed, overcast can make things easier. This shot was taken in midnight sunshine. We revisited in overcast the next morning - I'll post more from that encounter in due course.

For the majority of the action, I was on my knees in the front of the zodiac - forearm resting on the top of the sponson (I had to look up what it was called!). That seemed to dampen any vibration from the idling motor. In the same situation again, I would probably go for higher speed and a higher ISO.

One of the things that surprised me was the movement of the ice drifts - such that the perspective and light on the bear was constantly changing - we were drifting and his ice drift was also moving.

Going through the files and thinking about the situations again, has me itching to return to Svalbard - such a singularly amazing place!

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Gerald

[Steve Kaluski]

That 2 or 3 steps to my right I would have been walking on water!

So where's the problem Gerald???

For the majority of the action, I was on my knees in the front of the zodiac - forearm resting on the top of the sponson (I had to look up what it was called!). That seemed to dampen any vibration from the idling motor. In the same situation again, I would probably go for higher speed and a higher ISO.

Gerald, even more reason for higher SS as it may not be you, but another bod with two left feet who moves. So resting on the rib you are relying on others to ask 'can I move', then this gives you a chance to hold fire, it's all about communication in a zodiac.

One of the things that surprised me was the movement of the ice drifts - such that the perspective and light on the bear was constantly changing - we were drifting and his ice drift was also moving.

It's a constant battle Gerald, it's not like rocking up in a jeep in 'Africa or a sunny beach' everything is a movable feast and you need to experience it to appreciate the speed of things. BTW the Gullscape was shot from a zodiac, forget to mention it.

[Steve Kaluski]

I almost always shoot landscape as I have very few occasions to view images in portrait. That isn't to disagree that it couldn't look good in 4x5 or whatever , just me!

Gerald I appreciate this, but you are really then limiting yourself and tethering the subject into a format that may not always work. I would strongly suggest that you shoot in your 'normal mode', but also to flip the camera 90 degrees once you have an image in the bag, you might just surprise yourself,,, and us, happy shooting.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gerald .... love the capture , the blood soaked PB is stunningly great .
You were really lucky with that sighting !!!
Will not dive too deep into the techs ... just too late to the party and I am limited to my MBP for the time being .
Just think the crop is not the hottest on planet earth , IMHO.
Surprised to get the relatively high angle from a zodiac ??!!! AS it does look that you were shooting slightly down .

TFS Andreas