Alaskan Brown Bears of McNeil River Sanctuary

I was amazingly lucky this past summer when I was chosen for the permit lottery to spend 5 days/4 nights living among these beautiful Alaskan Brown Bears in the McNeil River Sanctuary in the Katmai National Park. It was an amazing surreal experience, especially when they came within a couple feet on their way by. In the 5 days I took over 3800 photos, here are just a couple.

Very nice, you did a great job.

Wonderful series! I enjoyed them all (and would really like to see the other 3790+ shots as well).

Thanks for the kind words. I linked to the flickr album for the rest of them, wasn't sure how many I could post.

very nice set of shots Tom

Thanks for the kudos Kmunroe

Love them all but #4 made me laugh. Thanks for posting.

What a wonderful opportunity! Thanks for sharing it with us!

Very nice work. Each one is excellent but the last one is amazing. Getting them to stand still for a bit for the slow shutter speed... I REALLY like that one. Good job on all though.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. res-yeah that was one of the better slow shutter ones that came out of the group, it was a balance of slowing it down enough to get good water motion and them to stand still long enough.

amazing photos! also you're so lucky I wish I could have an opportunity like that!

beautiful shots...simply beautiful!

Thanks again for the kind words.

ASC- all it takes is the $25 lottery fee every year until you get chosen. Well maybe a little bit more involved than that. I did it at a whim this past year but when i was selected, I knew I had to do whatever I had to in order to go as I figured I may only get one shot at it. There was a woman there in our group with her two teenage sons. She had been 20+ years ago with her husband and they had been trying to go again ever since and finally just got selected again. There's no telling what might happen. Here's a couple more.

Number 6 looks awesome IMO, but 1 & 2 are awesome as well! Great series!

Were these taken with the 100-400? Sorry my EXIF reader isn't working..

aebrown - thanks for the positive comments. Yes these were taken mostly with the 100-400L with the exception of the UWA one. Some I might have even had my 2x teleconverter on, but i'd have to look at the exif data myself to recall individually.