It is quite difficult to portray animal emotions in photographs or reveal something about their nature in a fraction of a second. It is so much easier with human facial expressions that we associate with happiness, sorrow, or anger. Even colors in photographs, or the lack thereof, can help establish certain moods. Even then, one person’s reaction to a certain characteristic can be completely opposite from another’s.
Solitary Bear
This first image I wanted to portray isolation and solitude. It is an interpretation of how I thought these bears were at certain times in their lives. Bears are solitary animals except in times of mating or caring for their cubs. I thought a single bear, emphasized by the starkness of a monochrome image and simple graphical elements helped communicate that aspect of their lives.
Portrait of happiness??
But what about a happy bear? I would tend to think a well fed, no competition from other bears, and feeling safe from threats could be situations leading to a happy bear. None of these translate very well into a single photograph. I suppose then we rely on our own familiarity with facial expressions. Now, I don’t know if this bear was overly happy or not, or perhaps just suffering a bit of gas from sucking on a rotting fish head. However, the general reaction from others who have seen this image seems to be quite uniform.
It is another reason why, despite the loss of the crop factor, the D700 trumped my D2X performance nearly every single time. At ISO2500, a D2X file would simply have been unusable and scrapped. Here – I didn’t even use any noise cleanup in post processing with the D700.
