Anita North Visits the Spirit Bears

What’s Up?

Not much. I walked/rope flow walked early on another gorgeous day; one small benefit of Hurricane Ian has been the fabulous dry weather it left in its wake. I stopped briefly at the Vulture Trees without much success. I swam early, finally finished my 2021 taxes, and got the information to my accountant, Chip Jackson, who had been vacationing in Europe for most of September.

In this post Anita North kindly shares four of her favorite images from her trip to the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia in September. Kudos to Anita for not worrying about the ridiculously high ISOs. If you want to make sharp images, it is best not to be concerned with the ISO settings that you need to make good exposures. Anita went as high as ISO 32,000! If you have a favorite image, please leave a comment and let us know what you like about it.

Today is Wednesday 5 October 2022. I will be packing to get ready to head over to Fort DeSoto for IPT #2. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day. This blog post took about three hours to prepare and makes one hundred ninety-four days in a row with a new one.

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This image was created on 9 September 2022 by Anita North. She used the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 318mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ) ISO 32,000. 1/1000 second at f/6.3 (wide-open) in Manual Mode. AWB. Note: ISO 32,000 is not a typo. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Animal Face/Eye Detection performed well. Click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. And be sure to scroll down to see the original. Image #1: Spirit Bear with salmon in stream/mixed light Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Anita G. North

Introductory Background Text by Anita North

In February 2016, there was a great international celebration. After a 20-year struggle, led in part by the Indigenous Tribes that have lived there for thousands of years, the Canadian Government finally signed the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement. What began with blockades, protests, and hundreds of arrests, ended with an unprecedented environmental stewardship agreement with 85% of the Great Bear Forest permanently protected from industrial logging.

Greenpeace International

The story of the campaign to protect Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, and how a landmark agreement has so far secured the protection of half of the natural old growth forest. The Great Bear Rainforest campaign demonstrates that out of conflict and peaceful resistance, it is possible to work towards solutions. It inspires our work in the Amazon, the Congo and Indonesia today. Learn more in the 3-minute YouTube video here.

This image was created on 17 September 2022 by Anita North. She used the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 200mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ) ISO 25,600. 1/1250 second at f/6.3 (wide-open) in Manual Mode. AWB. Note: ISO 25,600 is not a typo. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Animal Face/Eye Detection performed well. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #2: Spirit Bear walking on rocks near stream Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Anita G. North

A Critical Gear Error

Astoundingly, Anita made it to BC with her 600mm f/4, her 400mm f/2.8, and her 200-600 GM lens. As soon as she arrived, she realized that she had made a big mistake. With the low light levels in the rain forest, she should have left the 200-600 at home and taken the much faster (f/2.8 as compared to f/6.3) Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 II GM lens. Taking a look at the EXIF for Image #2 — created at only 200mm, you quickly realize that if Anita had the 70-200 in her hands, she could have saved 2 1/3 stops of ISO. Instead of needing ISO 25,600 for the image above, she could have maintained the same shutter speed and exposure level by working at ISO 5000. And with the lighter lens, she could easily have made sharp images at 1/500 second. That would have brought her down to a very attractive 2500 ISO.

That said, thanks to the great Sony A1 raw files and Topaz Denoise, Images #1 and #2 look pretty darn good to me.

National Geographic

In this well-worth-watching YouTube video, NG photographer Paul Nicklen tests his patience in an effort to capture the rare spirit bear — a potential key to saving a pristine corner of British Columbia. After a month in the rain and having spotted zero Spirit bears, he was worried about failing on a project that he proposed. He imagined his boss saying, “We’re a magazine; we publish photos, not excuses.” He says of his experience in the rain forest with the Spirit Bears, “One of the most powerful moments of his career.”

Watching this video will give you a good idea of why I never had a desire to be a National Geographic photographer.

Scroll down here to see another inspirational Paul Nicklen/Spirit Bear video.

This image was created on 13 September 2022 by Anita North. She used the hand held Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1250. Exposure was determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/800 sec. at f/4 (wide open). AWB. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Animal Face/Eye Detection performed well. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #3: Spirit Bear in stream in mixed light Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Anita G. North

More From Anita

I recently returned from a 2-week trip to Hartley Bay, British Colombia, the home of the Gitga’at First Nation. Native guides take you by boat to Gribbell Island to sit by the river and wait for the Spirit and Black bears to arrive for salmon fishing.

The Spirit Bear is a magnificent and rare subspecies of the American Black Bear. It’s white/creamy yellow fur and white nails are the result of mating between black bears that both carry a recessive gene. They are only found in north central British Columbia, Canada. They now number approximately 150 and the largest concentration of these very special animals are found on 3 islands –Gribbell, Prince Royal, and Roderick. Recently, all bear hunting was banned in the Great Bear Forest. Spending time waiting, watching, and having a chance to photograph this rare, ethereal bear, surrounded by equally rare, unspoiled temperate rainforest was a great blessing. Thanks to Arthur for sharing a few of my images on the blog. You can see more of my images here on Instagram (anitanorth1).

Huge thanks to my guide, Marvin Robinson. He truly is the “spirit bear whisperer.” He is a Guardian Watchman who has the responsibility of managing and restoring wildlife populations in the newly protected areas. He is an utterly amazing individual who has been and is making a huge contribution.

Spirit bears and the Great Bear Rainforest — from the Blog of Tim Irvin

Spirit bears are a variant of the American black bear with a recessive genetic trait that makes their fur white. These magnificent bears are extremely rare and are only found in a small corner of the Great Bear Rainforest. Existing population estimates vary between 100 to 500 individual bears and are likely to be closer to the low end of that scale. By comparison, the latest population estimate for wild pandas is just over 1800. Witnessing a white spirit bear in its dark green rainforest home is an extraordinary experience. The Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. This is a place where the ocean, mountains and ancient forests teem with wildlife including bald eagles, salmon, humpback whales, orcas, sea lions, grizzly bears and black bears, wolves, wolverines and more.

You can learn about booking a trip to see the Spirit Bears here.

This image was created on 14 September 2022 by Anita North. She used the handheld Sony FE 400mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera). ISO 400. 1/4000 sec. at f/2.8 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Animal Face/Eye Detection performed well. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #4: Humpback Whale feeding Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Anita G. North

Humpback Whales

In addition to the Spirit Bears, there were other natural history subjects to photograph!

Thanks to Anita for allowing me to share her images with y’all here on the blog.

This image was created on 9 September 2022 by Anita North. She used the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 318mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ) ISO 32,000. 1/1000 second at f/6.3 (wide-open) in Manual Mode. AWB. Note: ISO 32,000 is not a typo. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Animal Face/Eye Detection performed well. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #1A: The original for the Spirit Bear with salmon in stream/mixed light image Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Anita G. North

Dealing with Mixed Light Over-exposure

The screen capture above represents the raw file at the default settings. The red overlay on the highlights indicates the areas that are grossly over-exposed.

Note: Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART (that’s me), did the four raw conversions, the image optimizations, and the clean-up work for each of today’s featured images. As you can see, photographing in mixed light is a huge challenge, one that I strive to avoid. With sun on the log in this image, two raw conversions were done, one properly exposed for the bear, and a second, very dark one for the highlights. After running Topaz DeNoise on each image, the dark image was dragged atop the one that was exposed for the bear. Next, a Hide-all (Black, or Inverse) Mask was applied. The mask was painted away over the toasted areas in increments with a 33% opacity brush.

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Send a PayPal for $62.00 to birdsasart@verizon.net or call Jim at 863-692-0906 and put $62.00 on your credit card. Pick one of your best images and upload the raw file using a large file sending service like Hightail or DropBox and then send me the link via e-mail. I will download and save your raw file, evaluate the exposure and sharpness, and optimize the image as if it were my own after converting the raw file in Adobe Camera Raw. Best of all, I will make a screen recording of the entire process and send you a link to the video to download, save and study.

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You can learn how and why I converted all of my Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 in the DPP 4 RAW Conversion Guide here. More recently, I became proficient at converting my Nikon RAW (NEF) files in Adobe Camera Raw. About three years ago I began converting my Nikon and Sony RAW files in Capture One and did that for two years. You can learn more about Capture One in the Capture One Pro 12 Simplified MP4 Video here. The next step would be to get a copy of Arash Hazeghi’s “The Nikon Photographers’ Guide to Phase One Capture One Pro e-Guide” in the blog post here. Today, I convert my Sony raw files in Photoshop with Adobe Camera Raw.

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Typos

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