About
Well hello, bear fans and friends! I finally made my way through my thousands of photos (maybe over 700 were of my favorite bear, Otis) from my little adventure to Alaska's Katmai National Park to visit the famous Brooks Falls brown bears. The memories will last a life time, like all of my travel adventures. But this place is special, as are these beloved bears, and it felt almost magical how this little slice of the world can allow brown bears to become habituated to humans while remaining totally wild animals. Much props to the National Park Service for its continued management and education of this place and these bears. One of the wonderful things I realized these creatures and place is that it just lends itself to the creative outlet of art and photography. And now, I am over here trying to dream up several creative bear projects, but my pesky full time job keeps getting in the way of such fun.
In the next few weeks, I hope to get a several pieces featuring the beloved Brooks Falls bears finalized and up for sale, just in time for Fat Bear Week! I fully believe that art should be shared and I want to offer my pieces at a fair and affordable price. For those of you that share my love for the Katmai bears but aren't interested in purchasing any of my pieces, I posted many photos to my public Flickr page to share with you for any non-commercial use. Feel free to download them to make screensavers, puzzles, or create art of your own!
I will admit that I am a novice at all of this. If you like any of my work, I want to make the purchasing process as easy for you as possible. In other words, please BEAR with me... hahaha. Get it? Okay, nevermind, I'll see myself out. Please be aware that I don't currently have online payments set up through this site, so will be starting my sales on Etsy. I also wanted to offer free shipping and handling so unfortunately, I am currently only able to ship to US mailing addresses through USPS. Please reach out if you really want to make a purchase and we can see if something can be worked out.
But enough about me, let's talk a little about the bears of Katmai. I am sure you are more interested in that than me. I have been fascinated with watching these brown bears online for years, as there is a live camera feed available on Explore.org. The cameras a very special opportunity to be able to watching these bears and give us a glimpse in to nature and some of the challenges a bear (and salmon) faces to survive that we rarely get to see. Many of these bears come back to the same spot to catch sockeye salmon from the Bristol Bay salmon run in the same spot, year after year. Cubs grow up to become moms, now with cubs of their own. While generally thought of as rather solitary animals, these bears are in this makeshift sort of community based on food as sometimes 40+ different bears can all be fishing at Brooks Falls and the surrounding area. This allows us to watch hierarchies getting played out each year to establish the dominant bear. And it is also fun to watch these bears be successful and fatten up in the minimal amount of time they have before they head back to hibernation. Like many other fans of these bears, I have my favorites due to knowing many of their unique "personalities" and I hope their individual traits shows in my photographs and art.