mellisa and her cubs...........

i just got in this a.m. on the red-eye from anchorage after spending 10 days alaska. we spent time in a anchorage, kodiak and katmai np.

melissa lives in hallo bay and she is one very sweet bear ..............

great shots Ed!!

Beautiful series of shots Ed......the cubs are adorable.

thanx guys. i have hundreds of pictures of bears and alaska scenery that i'll be posting in upcoming days as time permits. i'm doing an album just on melissa and her cubs because they were so accomodating .

These are wonderful! I love babies!

Super Ed...

I had to LOL at #2.

Very cute!

great shots ed!!
love the little guy in #2

jay445 wrote in post #8481677
great shots ed!!
love the little guy in #2

thank you Jay! you probably have noticed that the cubs are different colors. at another location we saw three mothers with cubs. one pair of cubs were yearlings so they were practically as large as the sow. and there were two moms with cubs that were practically black (moms were black too).

oh, in prince william sound we saw a mother black bear fishing and she had three spring cubs safely treed next to her. they started squawking when they saw the boat so mom climbed the tree and and her cubs followed her down and they all took off.

the grizzlies are much more tolerant of people.

i'll post more pictures later .

ed rader

Great shots, even the goofy looking cub.

dam ed, you guys got close to them. no anxiety over the 10 feet seperating you and the bears?

Great shots Ed, were you only using the 100-400 or did you have something else?

Great shots, I would be very excited just being that close to wild bears, let alone bringing back some good photos of them.

cyruz wrote in post #8483071
dam ed, you guys got close to them. no anxiety over the 10 feet seperating you and the bears?

i never had any fear with melissa and we were closer at times than the pictures show. the cubs came right up to us but slightly out of reach. we were a group of four but when our wives stayed on the boat the bear encounters got quite extreme .

our guide was a guy that david attenborough called the bear whisperer and he carried no weapons of any sort. of course firearms are illegal in katmai but buck wilde didn't even carry flares or pepper spray even tho he had been charged by bears in the past.

he told us our only job was not to run. never run.

...there was one time a couple days later that i did get quite scared as a bear approached and i looked over at buck and he had his head down... a bolt of panic passed through me as i imagined he was praying.

we were sitting on the rocks in the water at at the base of a waterfall in driving rain with a fishing bear passing by a few feet from us. unlike the other bears this one never took its eyes off of us. and in the fish-choked pool in front of us the bear dropped its head and came closer and closer to me...and hell yeah i thought we might have made a huge mistake.

buck had his head down in a sign of submission and the bear eventually passed on his side and headed up the stream.

i'll post pictures of that later.....

ed rader

sweetlu60 wrote in post #8483456
Great shots Ed, were you only using the 100-400 or did you have something else?

thanx man . my main camera was the 1d mark III + 100-400L. some pictures of the ones i've posted so far were also taken with the 1ds mark III + 70-200L f4 IS. some with fill flash (it was dark and overcast).

i also used the 24-70L and 16-35L II. when i'm done you'll see pictures made with all these lenses .

ed rader