INBOUND

It's not often you have the opportunity to get eye to eye with a brown bear. With an inquisitive stare and powerful paws, half covered in mud, this close up from an inbound brown coastal bear makes for a formidable portrait. At low tide on the the mud flats of the Cook Inlet, these brown bears dig deep for nutritious clams, with their huge shovel like paws and claws, becoming smothered in viscous mud and sand. Sitting on the mud flats, I held my camera low just a centimetre or two off the surface in order to get this low, eye level angle. As the bear approached, I committed to shooting with my long lens to capture as much detail as possible in a tighter composition.

Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Alaska