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 The bears didn’t show up Saturday morning, but a family of Mergansers swam within inches of my camera as I waited.  I wish the camera was pointed down more, but I was expecting a much larger subject!  I usually don’t crop my images, but decided I would crop this one for the blog.

Since I share my successes, it is only fair I share my failures – and for this setup, I have had more then my share it seems.

You see I finally found the bears again and decided to try for my remote, wide angle, close-up thing.  As I was setting up my camera, my Pocket Wizard transmitter fell out of my jacket pocket and into the water.  I grabbed it fast and shook it off, it seemed fined.  I finished setting up, then stepped out in front and tested everything, and as you can see it was working fine.

Fast forward a half hour – here come the bears!  I anticipated their movement perfectly, they walked up stream, around the corner and right up to my camera – both the sow and cub side by side!  I was way back firing away like mad!  As soon as they moved on, I couldn’t wait to see what I a captured, man I was so excited!  Well, I captured nothing, my darn Pocket Wizard had stopped working – I don’t think I called it a “darn” Pocket Wizard at the time.  🙂 

So now both my receiver and transmitter have gone for a swim.  I took the transmitter apart and dried it out like I did the receiver, and all seems to be working again.  I have now had the bears walk up to my camera twice – I don’t know if I can get lucky and have them do it a third time, but I gotta try! 

Brown bear cub, Chugach National Forest, Alaska.

Today was the second consecutive day without a bear sighting, although I didn’t spend much time looking.  I think they may have moved on.  This was from last Friday.

I have this vision of a wide angle close up of a bear in the middle of a rain forest stream.  To capture this image, I have been setting my camera up in a pretty spot that has been frequented by bears, and then hooking up a Pocket Wizard, so that I can fire the camera remotely and safely hundreds of feet away.  It has almost worked a few times.

Yesterday I thought I had the perfect spot, great setting, and recent bears.  I set everything up, went back to my car to get the transmitter, and wouldn’t you know it, here come the bears!  Unfortunately, I hadn’t turned on the receiver on yet!  I stood back and waited, it was about 10 minutes before I could return to my camera, and this is how I found it!  Just think of the close up shot I could have had just before the bear knocked my camera over!

The camera landed on a rock, and seemed fairly dry and was in perfect working order.  The Pocket Wizard (the blue thing you see under water) wasn’t so lucky – it stopped working.  I really didn’t want to spend $180 dollars for a new one, so I completely disassembled it and dried it thoroughly, and today it started working again!

I have been using an older backup camera, but I would still hate to lose the thing.  I think I need some kind of metal box to protect the camera in the future.  These stories are probably cutting my camera gear resale values in half.  🙂