Bears, Bears and Bears in Alaska (oh my!)

One of the true adrenaline pumping experiences of my life has been the opportunity to photograph fearsome brown bears during my summer trips to Alaska. Whether unexpectedly getting close to one during a hike or a fishing trip, or paying big bucks for a fly-out experierence to Wolverine Creek or Brooks Falls, the excitement of seeing and documenting these magnificant creatures in the wild is unmatched. The images produced have been some of my most memorable shots.

In the summer of 2022, my good friends and fellow photographers Mont Dawson and Tom Wade took a day out of our planned fishing trip to travel to Brooks Falls by float plane, where dozens of bears gather in the summer to feed on the salmon running upstream. Needless to say, it was a photographer’s dream.

Several years earlier, in 2016, Tom Wade and I made a trip to Kodiak and took a day to photograph the mighty Kodiak brown bears.

I’ve also done the fly-out adventure to Wolverine Creek to catch sockeye salmon and view bears on the same day trip.

While at Wolverine Creek in 2020, we also happened to run into singer Jewel and her sister-in-law Jane Kilcher fishing and filming an episode of Alaska: the Last Frontier.

Nothing gets the heart pumping like running into mama bear and her 3 cubs unexpectedly, as the day that I took these photos on a hike to Russian River Falls.

And here’s a few more photos taken from the safety of a boat, taken while fishing for king salmon on the Nushagak River in remote Southwestern Alaska.