My first trip to photograph fishing Grizzly’s in Northern British Columbia started off better than expected. I hand my boarding pass and passport to the boarding agent at the gate and she gets some kind of error on her computer. My first thought is, ah man, I’ve been bumped…but she come back with a new boarding pass, and says “you’ve been upgraded”. Woot woot…I don’t think that there is any better news that could be provided at the airport…unless you brought along a lotto ticket and checked it at the airport and won. So I flew from Calgary to Whitehorse in style. Thank you Air Canada (I can’t believe I just typed that). So far my trip was off to a very good start.

From Whitehorse we travelled to British Columbia where we took a helicopter to our remote camp. The helicopter ride was over glaciers, mountains and hillsides and  provided amazing scenery. Once we arrived at our camp, we saw a bear almost right away.

Riverside Rambler

After that first sighting we had a bit of a quiet time before the bear photography really took off, slower than we had hoped.  While you can’t know why for sure, we think it was due to an early berry season, coupled with lower than normal salmon run.  But at the end of the day, it is nature so who really knows for certain.

These slower days provided me an excellent opportunity to focus on learning some of the features of my new camera (Canon 1D X Mark II) and to do some testing with my new camera.  Some of the testing I focused on was testing the exposure compensation adjustments, ISO and image noise at different ISO,  testing the AF system, and comparing this to the Canon 1dX.  I also worked on setting up the custom settings, and even discovered a new setting that I didn’t realize that the camera had, which is similar to the shooting banks of the Nikons.  I have really learned a lot about the new camera in a short time. Stay tuned to my future blog posts on what I have discovered.

Despite being slower than we hoped at the start of the trip, I still walked away with some really great images. This trip was different from other Grizzly Bear trips that I have been on in the past, because you can sit right along the side of the river and have the Grizzly Bears walk right by and fish.  In addition to the Grizzly Bears, this location also provided an opportunity to photograph Bald Eagles, Mergansers, and Dippers. Stay tuned to my recent photos, and journeys album for more photos from the trip.

Snoozin’ Sea Lion

Now I’m off on my next adventure, where I will spend 7 days aboard a sailboat photographing Marine Mammals. Here is a Sea Lion snoozin’ which I photographed during my 2015 trip. Keep an eye on my recent photos and Marine Mammals Gallery for my images from my 2016 trip.