Young Grizzly Sow and Golden Grasses – Near Kukak Bay, Katma

This is one of my favorite photos of a brown bear…mostly because of the unusual beauty of the bear and the lovely glowing meadow grasses. I didn’t bother to even process this photo for a year because it didn’t look that good as an unprocessed RAW file. But I started trying things in On1, and the software helped me to coax out the image that was waiting there.

There is great diversity in the appearance (colors, length of fur, ear size, etc.) and the hunting skills of grizzlies. This young female had long golden-highlighted fur, a regal canine-like muzzle, and was a beautiful specimen in every way. Unfortunately for her, though, she was hopeless at catching fish. She couldn’t grab them when they were spawning up the streams, nor did she know that she could retrieve dead ones from the bottom of the creeks and ponds. We watched her chase fish for hours over the course of several days, and she never caught anything. Once in a while, however, she was able to stumble upon a dead carcass that had been caught in the meadow grasses as the tide receded. I like this photo because the grizzly’s long golden fur is echoed in the tall golden grasses, and the whole image seems to glow.