How to Photograph Bears in Bright Light
Photographing Grizzly Bears in bright conditions in or in front of water.
Without a doubt, grizzly bears are one of my top photographic subjects. Over the last few years I led numerous photo workshops to photograph grizzly bears all over North America. Compared to most bird species, which I photograph a lot, bears are somewhat easier to capture if for no other reason they are much larger in size. That being said, grizzlies can offer up other challenges for the novice nature photographer that makes capturing that perfect image more of a challenge. One such challenge is photographing bears on a bright day when they are in or in front of reflective water surroundings and or backgrounds.
Let’s look at how we can control our exposures in these conditions.
If you have a subject that is darker than the background or the immediate surroundings it is in, then you have to be aware that the camera is going to compensate for the brighter area in the frame and give you an underexposed subject. This is assuming that we are shooting in AV or aperture priority mode. When shooting in AV the camera selects the shutter speed based on taking a light meter reading of the full scene in the viewfinder using matrix or full sensor metering. When the background and or the surrounding area around the bear is bright and reflective the camera will react to the brightness by speeding up the shutter so as not to overexpose these bright areas. This in turn will also darken the subject and likely give you an underexposed bear. The degree of this under exposure will depend mostly on the severity of the contrast difference between subject and background or the immediate area surrounding the bear.
As you may know this is where we use our trusty exposure compensation to correct what the camera does in this situation. We simply dial in anywhere from plus two thirds of a stop compensation or more to make sure we do not underexpose the bear. Simple enough isn’t it? Yes.
But now throw in a background of bright, reflective water, or even more difficult, a bear in that same water and we have a bigger challenge. When the sun is hitting water the water can become highly reflective. This, of course, depends on the time of day, angle of sun, time of year, etc. For this exercise we are assuming we are photographing our grizzly on a bright sunny day and we are shooting on a downward angle at our subject. As a photographer we must be aware that this very bright and reflective water surface can play havoc with our meter reading and hence, the final exposure outcome of our image. You will likely have to compensate more than you would with a typical background of trees, bushes or grass. We may even have to overexpose the water to make sure the bear is not badly underexposed. This may call for compensating up to two full stops or more. It will depend mostly on your given conditions for the moment of the image capture.
My main point here is to make sure that as a nature photographer you pay close attention to any situation where your subject is in or in front of water. Sunshine on water make for great summer fun but they make exposing a dark subject not as much fun! Join me on one of the following bear photo workshops: Alaska Fishing Bears, BC Bears, Polar Bears Mother and Cubs
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