Grizzly aggression

Grizzly bears will stand on their hind legs to see greater distances, but they can also exhibit aggressive behavior by doing this just before an attack. Sometimes young bears will do a false charge in which they run at you and then stop. This is designed to intimate and strike fear in an opponent. I’ve been the recipient of both types of behavior, and trust me, these intimidation techniques work! Scared to death was I! I photographed this bear in the Alaskan panhandle in the 90’s when I was still shooting film with the Mamiya RZ 67. Unfortunately I had to manually advance the film with a cocking mechanism, and therefore I was only able to get one frame of this action. Today I would have fired off 14 frames per second and captured a range of motion. My settings were unrecorded, but I remember using a 350mm fixed focal length lens. I can tell that my shutter speed was 1/400th of a second because the water dripping from the bear’s claws is sharp, and this was the fastest speed possible on this camera body. The lens aperture was undoubtedly f/5.6, the largest opening available on that lens, because that allowed me to use a fast shutter. I always used a tripod with this camera. After I took the shot, I moved away from the river very fast.