Back into Bear Country

Foreground Detail

For those of you that don’t know, I’m into photography and bears, and very into the photography of bears. Back in 2016 I went to see bears in Finland and had the best time. I wanted to go again immediately, or rather, I didn’t want to come home.

In the nine years since the Finland trip I’ve gone fully self-employed, taken on two interns, completed an MA and started teaching at a university or two. While the time has not been left fallow, seeing bears has remained 6-12 months away for the duration.

Back in March I worked The Photography and Video Show at the Excel Centre in London. I was there as part of the sales team for London Camera Exchange. This was my seventh TPS for LCE. I’ve made a fair few of my major purchases at the show over the years period, as there are usually some cracking show deals to be had. My 5d MKIVs came from TPS, my first R5 did too, I got my editing monitor and a few lenses, some books and some bags.

The fact is, until this year I’d yet to leave TPS empty handed.

Photographer Maths

There were a couple of lenses that I wanted, a very long one, and a very short one. The Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS USM would replace my 11mm f/4 Irix Blackstone, a super-wide that sees little action work wise, the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM would replace my Sigma 150-600 Sport lens, a lens that sees even less.

At 2.5k-3k each, neither has been a priority when it came to transitioning from the EF to the RF mount, because they don’t earn enough to pay for themselves, and I don’t need them enough to warrant having them personally. Much as I tried I just couldn’t justify spending the money. 

A few days after I got home I realised that I had ‘saved money’ by not buying the lenses. This meant that I now had imaginary money left over. It’s key that you embrace this point so I’ll reiterate, not buying a lens I couldn’t afford, meant I could buy something else that I couldn’t afford.

There is an opportunity cost associated with having a full kit bag, one that I’ve lamented on more than one occasion. I’ve written in the past about ‘WPBs’, a measurement of expense that equates a desired purchase to its value in ‘weeks photographing bears’. This being a handy way to keep track of the things I can’t do because I bought more lenses.

I decided that it was more important to make a different photograph further afield that it was to take a more technically perfect one in my garden.

A few phone calls to the nice people at Wildlife Worldwide (the people who’d helped me get to Finland all those years ago) and I had a tailor made fly-drive trip to Slovenia to see bears booked. I began pulling together as much of the imaginary money as I could.

Bristol Bears

In the run up to the Finland trip back in 2016, I got panicked about not having a fast long lens to take with me. I was worried about the prospect of travelling all that way and not being able to get the shots because my lens was too dark or too short. After some prevarication I bought a very battered Canon 300mm f/2.8 – one that had earned its living on the touch-line shooting professional sport. It remains the only fast telephoto prime I’ve ever owned, and I had no plan to keep it. I bought it, took it, and used it before part-exchanging it on my return for my  Sigma 150-600mm Sport.

(I bought the Sigma because at the time Canon didn’t offer an equivalent that I could afford. The flexibility of the zoom and the weather-proofing of the Sport version seemed to tie in nicely with the things I do with long lenses, like occasional motorsport, odd afternoons in hides, etc.)

Now, the ramp up to the Slovenia trip began and I started to look around the internet, checking in on how well I could expect the Sigma to perform with my Canon R5. The news was not great. The much newer body and lens could misscummionicate and pulse in and out of focus, making sharpness a bit of a lottery. Suddenly I was worried about the prospect of travelling all that way and not being able to get the shots because my autofocus was a bit squirrelly. 

In early August I took the Sigma Sport to the Wild Place Project in Bristol to photograph the bears there. I thought I could get a feel for how the lens and autofocus behaved. Eye-detection seemed to work okay, provided the bear wasn’t moving through foliage and all in all the shots were fine. I was a little worried about how sharp they were going to be.

The thing I was most worried about was how much the thing weighed, at 2.8kg it was a weighty option and long at full extension. The weight would be fun given the flight and all the other things I wanted to bring, and the length could be an issue in the hide. 

While ruminating on this, I shot half a roll of Ilford HP5 with the Sigma with my Canon EOS 1 and took the longest focal length images I’ve ever made on 35mm film.

Menagerie Evolved

I’ve been culling my camera collection over the last few years, condensing it from a sprawlling collection into a functional and focused toolkit. I want to get back to a set of cameras designed make a wide array of quality photographs, rather than just fill my shelves with under-utilised ornaments. Cameras and lenses that haven’t seen enough action have moved on to provide wider functionality accross the gestalt.

A little while ago I gutted my Canon FD lens collection to buy a 28mm Voigtlander for my Leica. I then parted with the Canon F1 and the 55mm f/1.2, alongside my GW690III to get my hands on my Fujica 6×17 camera. This means that the collection, while smaller, has become more valuable, and doesn’t have a lot left in it that I’m prepared to part with.

So the ideal replacement for the Sigma 150-600, was Canon’s own RF100-500 f/4.5-7.1L IS USM. It is slightly shorter than the Sigma at 500mm, and 1/3 of stop darker at f/7.1, but it’s also razor sharp, incredibly fast to focus, surprisingly compact and half the weight.

It was also one of the two lenses that I hadn’t bought at TPS. One of the lenses that, by not buying,  had freed up the imaginary money to pay for the trip I was about to go on.

I did much hand-wringing, there were discussions, offers were put forward, emails were sent and phone calls were made. Special sums were done, hire companies inspected, and late night schemes were aborted.

After all of this, and some more photographer maths, I did a deal that put a secondhand RF100-500mm in my bag.

I got to have my picnic and eat it.

The Trip

Wildlife Worldwide offer an organised trip to Slovenia in May and June, with a photographic guide and a fly/drive in September. Intern management meant that it would make the most sense for me to go for a bespoke trip that fell in the summer holidays, just for the sake of logistics. 

I flew into Ljubljana, landing in the evening, collected my hire-car and headed out into some amazing scenery. Within minutes of leaving the airport I was confronted with a beautiful church caught in the golden light of the early evening and had to fight the desire to stop and shoot it.

I arrived at the Guest House in time for dinner, had a beer and went to bed, not quite able to believe that the trip had actually arrived, I was here, and this was happening.

There are two warm and insulated permanent hides behind the guesthouse itself each partially sunk in the ground and have reflecting pools and multiple perches for wild birds to come to. These are accessible early in the morning so I would head there before breakfast and watch as the world came to life. (I spent a good deal of time hoping that a red squirrel would visit, he studiously stayed away.)

Around the corner, a short drive away, there were three kingfisher hides set around a stocked pool and with fixed perch in place for photos, these were slightly less established affairs, camouflage tents and garden chairs.

On the second day I went out for a bit, trying get a bit more used to the hire car with it’s beeping and bonging and the righthanded manual gearbox. This gave me the chance to make images of the landscape, stuff I found in it and to find a bar for an espresso.

The Bears

For the bear viewing we headed out in convoy out towards the Croatian border, the trip up to the hides took about forty minutes, and we were in the hides from 3pm till 7pm each night. The hides were warm and comfortable, and arrayed in such a way that each gave you a different view of the clearing in front of you. (There were other hides in other locations but I was disappointed not to be offered the chance to go to these.) 

I had three days at Mlakar, three sessions in the bear hides and we saw the same bears over the course of the three nights. There were two mothers with cubs, one set were on their second season, the others on their first. We had heavy rain on the first and third night, but we saw bears each time and they were glorious.

There were some noisy guests in one of the other hides who kept worrying and disturbing the bears. (On the first and third night they managed to scare them off completely.)

Galling as this was, I have to admit ambivalence. The bears’ reactions to the noises made for some photogenic behaviours and contributed to some of my favourite images, even though the bears were disturbed and our time with them was cut short.

Coming Home

The final day was my own to fill. My flight home was at 9pm and I could do whatever I wanted until then. I decided not to spend another morning not seeing the squirrel, or to take another 500 photos of the Kingfisher, and opted instead to head out to Lake Bled, mostly on my father’s recommendation. It did not disappoint.

It was genuinely weird to be alone and with nothing to do. I haven’t done any travelling on my own for years and it was odd not to have to bear anyone else’s needs in mind as I made decisions about where I would eat, or how far I would walk. I had sushi for lunch, drank espresso by the lake, which I eventually decided to walk around, making photos as I walked. 

I took the drone with me with the primary idea of getting airborne over Lake Bled. When the time came I just wasn’t sure where I could safely and legally take off. I’d familiarised myself with the rules about flying drones over Slovenia, and it felt a little risky. Missing the plane because I was in jail would have been really stupid. I settled for having the RF15-35 f/2.8 as my walk around lens and choosing to relax.

Finally I made my way back toward Ljubljana, hoping to find the church I’d seen on the first night, I didn’t, but I did see the last bear of my trip. 

The guys I’d hired the car from were eager to see some bear pictures and I obliged, before I took part in that most weird of regular modern conveniences, I flew home.

Just after lunch I my feet were in a lake 1000 miles away, and by the time my head hit the pillow, I was at home.

Conclusions

The trip was amazing. Going on an adventure was amazing. The bears were amazing. I’m aware that I’m extremely lucky to have had the time, money and opportunity to go and do this. I’m very aware that to have both the lens and the trip was (probably) excessive. I’m also aware that this kind of travel isn’t the most responsible, and have taken steps to mitigate its impact with Atmosfair.

I obviously can’t say what would have happened if I had taken the Sigma to Slovenia. In the quantum universe where that happened I might be writing now about how much I saved not buying one, or about how gutting it is when the AF drops it on an otherwise perfect photo.

I am extremely pleased with the images I got back from the RF 100-500, and in the quantum universe where I hired one I would now be trying to buy one to keep. As a Canon user and a film photographer it’s hard to shoot at f/7.1 and ISO 6400 without panicking a little, it just goes against everything you know, but the R5, the lens, and a little Lightroom and you’re golden.

Whether I get back into the woods again will remain to be seen, it may well be another nine years before I get the chance. Until then I’m going to remember the excitement as the bears came out of the woods on that first night, of watching the cubs play and their mums eat, and I’m going to remember dangling my feet in the lake, when I had no-one to please, nothing to do, and all day to do it in.

Rockwell Moment

I don’t have affiliate relationships but it might be useful to know that my RF100-500 came from London Camera Exchange, (in this case the Bristol branch). Everything in my bag did. They’ve found a home for my Sigma already, and my 5D Classic is with a mate’s brother on the understanding that I get first refusal if he decides to sell it…