Animals always look more impressive when you photograph them from a low perspective. Eye level or even below eye level is ideal. This gives them greater statue, and this is true for very small animals that are close to the ground as well as large animals like this polar bear. Most tour companies get photographers close to polar bears in huge tundra buggies that sit very high off the ground. When you stand up and shoot, the camera can easily be 15 feet above the bears. Looking down on these huge predators, even with a telephoto lens, is not the way to go. Some companies have lodges in which you can shoot from ground level, and this produces images that are quite compelling. The photographers are enclosed in electric fence compounds and the bears are free -- it’s a perfect photographic situation. I’m going to be scheduling such an experience again for 2019. I photographed this polar bear at the edge of the Hudson Bay about an hour by small plane north of Churchill in Canada. I was actually laying on the frozen ground so I could be as low as possible. I used a 500mm f/4 Canon lens, and the settings were 1/1000, f/8, 800 ISO.
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