Coastal Brown Grizzly Bear on the beach

A Coastal Brown Bear on the hunt for Razor Clams on Ninagiak Island delights my group with a close encounter of the bear kind during my Ultimate Brown Bear Adventure in Alaska.

The Katmai coast is known for the large number of brown bears congregating to feed on salmon. The bears also scavenge on marine mammal carcasses that wash ashore and have developed the unique skill of digging for razor clams. They have also been observed swimming relatively long distances to gain access to ground-nesting birds. In Hallo Bay, brown bears swim 2 miles (3.2 km) from the mainland to Ninagiak Island to feed on the eggs and chicks of glaucous-winged gulls and puffins.

These bears are most often young males or sows and their cubs. It is advantageous for a mother bear to take her offspring to islands because of the ready supply of food and because the islands are likely safe refuge from adult males. Likely, cubs taken to an island by their mother will return.

Coastal Brown Grizzly Bear On The Beach (Coastal brown bear, Grizzly bear, Ursus arctos, ours brun) Ninagiak Island on the Katmai Coast from my June Coastal Brown Bears of Katmai workshop in Alaska. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony 200-600mm Lens (@350mm) ISO 3,200, f/6.3 @ 1/3,200s Manual exposure. Full frame image.

Coastal Brown Grizzly Bear female yearling cub in fog

Here is another image from my Ultimate Brown Bear Photo Adventure last June. We had countless hours with this curious Coastal Brown Bear Yearling (1-year-old cub). I chose my Sony Alpha a1 camera body paired with the ultra-portable Sony 200 to 600mm zoom lens set at 378mm.

Coastal Brown Grizzly Bear female yearling cub in fog (Coastal brown bear, Grizzly bear, Ursus arctos, ours brun) from my June Coastal Brown Bears of Katmai workshop in Alaska. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds. Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless camera & Sony 200-600mm Lens (@378mm) ISO 5,000, f/6.3 @ 1/1,250s Manual exposure. Full frame image top to bottom; cropped a little off the sides to make a 4x5 aspect ratio.

Join me in Alaska for the Ultimate Brown Bear adventure of a lifetime

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Join me in Alaska for the Ultimate Brown Bear adventure of a lifetime 🐻

Northern Gannets SPOONING

Here is an image from 2013 that I have looked at so many times! It is extraordinary how affectionate Gannets can be!

There is still a couple of spots available for my June Gannets trips due to unvaccinated participants who decided to postpone another year.

Join me for the ultimate immersive bird photography workshop! We start each day onboard a 28-foot Zodiac Hurricane under the bird-filled cliffs of Bonaventure Island. We’ll be photographing diving Gannets, Common Murres, Razorbills, Harlequin Ducks, and Black Guillemots while getting close to Grey Seals and Whales. After our daily Zodiac adventure, it’s off to the colony with the park staff transporting our gear on their Kawasaki Mule, making our walk an easy and pleasant one!

Bald Eagle

I recently returned from Chris’s Eagle Workshop in Homer Alaska. Over the years, I have traveled extensively and can say without hesitating that this was the best trip I’ve ever been on. Chris is a very cordial but no nonsense guy. Everything about the trip was organized to the max. I’ve been photographing wildlife for 35 years and thought I had a pretty good idea about how to do it so I wasn’t expecting to learn a whole lot that was new. Wrong! Over the years, other “professionals” had encouraged me to shoot in aperture priority or auto ISO. When Chris told us he was going to teach us to set our camera exposures manually, I thought that sounded like a lot of unnecessary effort. That notion turned out to be false. If you attend this workshop and don’t already shoot in manual mode, your life will be changed. The exposures of the photos I took are spot on and better than any I have ever achieved.

In addition to the new material I learned, the “eagle shooting” was beyond anything one could ever imagine. It was both action packed and challenging. Our group was only five people and Chris bent over backward to make sure that each of us got the best photos of our lives. Even though I had substantial problems with my equipment, I now have more killer eagle photos than I could have ever hoped for. If you want an informative and fun packed trip, I encourage you to sign up for this or any of Chris’s workshops. I have signed up again for next year’s Eagle Workshop, in spite of my truck load of eagle photos, which I believe tells the whole story.”

— Ron Brown Colorado USA

Coastal Brown Bear Mother and Cub Clamming

Here’s mom showing her cub how to clam in Geographic Harbor, Katmai National Park, AK. My planned June Ultimate Alaska Bear Boat Trip is officially now another victim of the CORONAVIRUS COVID-19; it is best everyone stay home and let’s flatten the curve together. Join me in October for fishing bears or next June for mothers and cubs.