When Brad Josephs took his GoPro camera out in beautiful Alaska, he was probably trying to get majestic footage of Grizzly bears for the BBC's Great Bear Stakeout. Instead, what he got was a hungry mother Grizzly and her cub trying to eat his camera. We get some, shall we say, interesting views of what a Grizzly bear's mouth looks like (not that that's something we're all interested in seeing, is it?).
Last month we shared the story of a photographer who had his DSLR stolen and used by a lion. Wildlife photographer Dean Swartz had a similar experience recently with a different (and much larger) predator: a black bear.
This past Friday wasn't a good day for photographers. On the same day that one wedding photographer saw his client drown in a freak accident during a trash the dress shoot, a man hiking in Alaska was mauled to death by a grizzly bear after getting too close to it with his camera.
Depending on your subject matter, it can be a very good idea to take out a damage waiver when renting camera equipment. Wildlife photographer Andrew Kane learned this recently after renting gear from LensRentals for a shoot in Yellowstone. Here's his account of how the borrowed equipment ended up broken:
I recently rented a D4, Wimberly head, and 600VR from you, and the day before yesterday, I had a little bit of an accident. I was photographing a coyote here in Yellowstone and I followed it into the woods about 300yds away from the road. As I am taking pictures of the coyote, I heard twigs breaking behind me, and as I turned around I saw it was a grizzly bear. I picked up the tripod with the D4 and 600 on it and slowly started to back away. The bear got closer and closer as I tried to back up. When the bear got to within 20 yds. of me, I bumped into a brush pile that I could not lift the tripod over, so I had no choice but to leave the gear and continue away from the bear.
In case you missed our earlier post, let's get you up to speed: in the internet age, the argument is that you don't own anything anymore. This is relevant because yet another copyright infringement lawsuit has made its way across our computer screens, this time between a student photographer and the Colorado University newspaper The CU Independent that printed and distributed his now famous falling bear image.
When clients Janet and Darrell asked Australian photographer Hailey Bartholomew for a creative engagement shoot earlier this year, she came up with the idea of having the couple wear oversized bear heads.