Lightning storm last night from our rental in Dove Mountain, Tucson, Arizona.

The Olympus Live Composite mode works great for this type of photography. I just watch the back of the camera until the lightning as illuminated the scene.

This little black bear cub up in a tree had to be one of many highlights from last summer! Those eyes!

A couple of cute little first summer brown bear cubs watching mom fish for salmon.

I’m back in Arizona and of course the first thing I did was check on my waterhole at the Desert Photo Retreat. There was some good news, and bad news.

First, the bad news. The timer that opens a solenoid valve for one minute twice a night malfunction in early August and stopped working. I’m guessing from a power outage. First time it had failed in four years. The good news, the waterhole worked through the hottest, driest portion of the summer. By August, there was pretty good monsoon activity.

More good news, we had lots of visitors! Mountain lion (s) were back. One even took a nap by the waterhole. Striped, hooded and spotted skunks – the striped had four babies! The hooded was missing when I flew down in July, so good to see this regular back. The javelina still have four babies. Plus, gray fox, bobcat, coyote, deer, great horned owl, and a smaller owl. The only one missing was the ringtail. 🙁 I only have the camera on at night.

I was hoping to capture the speed, grace and power of the coastal brown bear. One of the advantages of being at a place like the Katmai Coast is there are endless opportunities to photograph the bears chasing salmon. In this case a used a very slow shutter speed (1/15th of a second) to blur the action. Interested in opinions, does this “work” for you?

Details: 1/15th of a second, f/10 ISO 100. Olympus OM-1 body, Olympus 150-400mm lens at 150mm.

Serious focus! Brown bear on the Katmai Coast, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Watching brown bears chase down salmon after salmon never gets old! Last week in Katmai.

This sow and two cubs patiently watched a larger boar catch salmon in the fishing hole while they waited their turn. The biggest males typically have first pick of the best fishing spots. Katmai National Park, Alaska.