Tuesday, July 23, 2024

The Grizzly Bear Named "Jam"

Jam foraging at the top of a distant ridge. (click any image to enlarge)

On my recent road trip and when in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) we encountered a four-year old grizzly bear that has been given the name of Jam.  Jam was very high up on a ridge, really too far to make good photographs but due to my excitement, I photographed her anyway.  

For this set of images I used my Nikon Z8 with the Nikon 180-600mm f.5.6-6.3 lens attached.  Again, because of the extreme distance, I attached the Nikon 1.4X Z-mount tele-converter and also enacted the DX feature in the camera.  The DX feature crops the image at 1.5X and reduces the files size from 45.7mp to 19.4mp.  The benefit of using DX in camera rather than just cropping in Lightroom later is that it magnifies the image in the viewfinder which provides for more accurate autofocus.  Even with the effective 1260mm focal length, I still had to crop in the final image by about two-thirds.  As I said, she was really far away.  By the way, all these images were made handheld.






If you look closely, Jam has a bit of vegetation in her mouth.



Finally, only through the magic of DXO PhotoLab 7 and Topaz Photo AI was I able to make halfway decent final images.  Two or three years ago without those plug-ins, I would not have even attempted them.

Aren’t photographic technology advances wonderful?

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 24, 2024 at 7:22 PM

    Fine images. I think advances in post processing software have been greater than advances in the hardware in the past decade. Excellent image quality despite the great enlargement. The size and power of the bear is evident from the images.
    Long lenses are great, too. It would not be good to be too close.
    I remember reading an article about a French wildlife photographer whose most famous image was that of a charging bull elephant. In the article, it said he took the image with his favorite 50mm lens. I wonder if he is still with us today.

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousJuly 25, 2024 at 6:32 AM

      Thank you! I’ll choose to keep a long distance from grizzly bears even if it means I don’t get the photograph. As big and powerful as they are, they are also quite fast and nimble. ~Dennis

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  2. AnonymousMay 19, 2025 at 9:27 PM

    The photos have a vintage postcard vibe. I like them!

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