Brown bear catches red salmon, Brooks falls, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Canon 500mm, 1/800 sec @ f/8, ISO 400.
This image of a brown bear catching a red salmon at Brooks falls in Katmai National Park is comprised of three independent images, stitched together to generate a panorama or 3:1 format image. This offers a high resolution file that embodies a wider format more suitable for some reproduction uses, for example, a billboard. In this case, I had the panorama concept in mind, but needed to capture the fish shot first. Once that was successfully completed, I then swung the camera to the right for two successive frames, with enough overlap to offer a reasonable seam. The moving water confuses photoshop’s automatic stitching program, but because of the somewhat blurry nature of the background, one can manually stitch it with very little difficulty. It was taken with a 500mm lens, which is a tight frame but it worked out well given the location of the bear in the distance at the base of the falls.
