The photograph above is of an animal that was barely seen—or Bearly Seen as I have titled the image. By the time I reached the area where this bear was meandering, a Park employee was tossing rocks to shoo him (or her) away from the visitor center. I arrived in time to capture only the retreat.
And when bears run, they move fast. I ran like crazy to catch up, but only managed to come across a couple of hikers who had seen the bear passing (they had moved off the trail). I retraced my path, rushed to my car and made like Jack Reacher (from the movies) down to the Basin camp grounds. I then rushed up the trail in hopes of catching the bear coming down. The meeting never happened. I suppose he/she took an off-path route.
During my attempts to photograph a bear, I have strayed into an area reserved for Park employees. (I had received an “inside” tip that a couple of bears frequented that specific area.) All I found were droppings—recent and “fresh”—but no bears.
Another attempt was prompted by my seeing a bear lumber across the Basin camps while I was talking to a woman. I grabbed my equipment and pursued into the underbrush (with the aforementioned woman given me hand signals from atop an elevated rock). We both lost sight of the bear and I came out of the underbrush behind a deer. And During yet another brief glimpse, I was driving on the west side of the park and witnessed a bear climbing a steep grade of terrain in a region that bears don’t usually visit (so I was told when reporting the bear).
But thus far the above image is the best that I have managed to capture.
If you do visit the park and come across a bear, don’t run. Toss rocks, wave your hands or even crack a whip if you have one. They tend to avoid confrontation, but you have to stand your ground to ensure this. Merely seeing one is pretty intimidating and just a little nerve–racking.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 19.9 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.