Shake It Out

For several minutes, the brown bear had been snorkeling through the river, disappearing beneath the surface in search of salmon. Then suddenly he emerged, and I caught him at exactly the right fraction of a second. His eyes were squeezed shut, his nose pointed skyward, and he was already beginning to shake the river from his fur.

I had the shutter speed cranked high, freezing what would normally be an instant too fast for the eye to really see. Water exploded outward in every direction—sheets and individual droplets forming a radial pattern around his head and shoulders. The bear himself almost looks still, while everything around him tells you just how violently he's moving.

I called the photograph Shake It Out because that's exactly what the moment was: pure, instinctive motion captured and frozen in time. There’s something almost playful about his expression, but the explosion of water makes the image feel wonderfully chaotic.