A brown bear throws off a wall of spray in the river at Katmai National Park, Alaska

Katmai National Park, Alaska

Hurricane

I was down close to the water in Katmai when this bear surfaced and began to shake. From this low angle, I was looking almost directly at him as the water came flying off his fur. The force of the movement was pulling his eyes wide open, giving him an expression that makes the whole moment look far more intense than it probably felt to him.

Shooting at a high shutter speed froze the motion into a kind of spiral around the bear. Sheets of water and individual droplets radiate outward, with the bear sitting almost perfectly at the center of it all. What would normally register as a blur of movement became something almost sculptural—the bear at the center of his own little hurricane.

Nikon Z 7II · Nikkor Z 180-600mm + Z TC-1.4x · 840mm · f/9 · 1/2000 sec · ISO 3600

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Frame 39 of 82

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