Brown Bears of Coastal Alaska
Brown bears are North America’s largest predators and the undisputed king of any ecosystem in which they live in. Alaska holds more of these bears than anyplace else in the Western Hemisphere, and contains 95% of the US population. And Lake Clark National Park, where this workshop will be based out of, has densities of over 200 bears per 50 square miles – one of the densest populations on the planet!
This August I will be taking a small group of photographers on an action packed brown bear photography workshop to Lake Clark National Park, that will put you face to face with these extraordinary animals.
Lake Clark National Park and Cook Inlet are a wildlife photographers dream. Towering snow capped mountains. Lush primeval forests. Bald eagles. Sea birds galore. And of course, bears – EVERYWHERE. If you are looking for adventure, for big wilderness, for massive predators up close and personal, then this workshop is for you.
In addition to the bears, we will also spend time photographing a puffin colony, as well as the incredible numbers of bald eagles that make this place their home.
There is also an optional extension for this workshop. We offer our Epic Brown Bears workshop just afterwords that can be added on to this at a discounted price. The Epic Brown Bears is completely different, filled with float planes and boats and adventure and photographic opportunities that are completely unlike our Brown Bears of Coastal Alaska workshop. Adding these two together creates the ultimate bear photography experience.
We conduct this workshop differently than others who visit this area and require specific items of gear to create the types of photographs that we are targeting such as chest waders and ground pods. This does not increase the difficulty of the workshop. Instead, it enhances the photographic opportunities for participants allowing us to move beyond creating cliche images of bears.
The Basics
Dates:
August 7 - 14, 2024 | SOLD OUT
August 20 - 27, 2025 | Space Available
Cost: $8700
Deposit: $2000
Included: 5 nights lodging at Silver Salmon Lodge, all meals while at the lodge, park passes, fishing licenses, and local flights.
Not Included: Lodging and meals in Anchorage, gratuities for guides and lodge staff
Classroom Session: We will spend a full day in a classroom session discussing the important photographic concepts needed to take full advantage of this workshop. From low-light photography to mastering birds in flight, this classroom session is designed to insure that each participant is fully prepared for the opportunities to come. This one day will completely change your success rate for the entire workshop, without sacrificing days spent in the field photographing wildlife.
Airport: Ted Stevens International Airport. ANC. Anchorage, Alaska.
Location: Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced
Physical Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Participants: This workshop is limited to 6 participants.
Itinerary
Day 1: Arrive in Anchorage, Alaska. We will meet the first evening for happy hour, dinner, and a briefing on the week to come.
Day 2: As this is a photography workshop and not a tour, education and improving your photography is the prime directive of what we do. For this reason, we will spend a full day in a classroom like session discussing and working on skill sets we deem to be critical for success in this location. Your experience in the field will be significantly more productive as a result of this time spent in a controlled environment working on these skill sets without the sensory overload of the Alaskan wilderness all around you.
Day 3: Fly out to the lodge by bush plane where we will land directly on the beach and then transfer our gear and selves from planes to four wheelers. Once we are situated in our rooms at the lodge, we will do a safety briefing about living and working around brown bears. Given the location of the lodge, we will literally have bears walking around outside the doors to our rooms. After the safety meeting and orientation, we will put chest waders on, grab cameras, and head out into the field.
Day 4 - 7: Each day we will spend roughly 10 hours in the field photographing bears. Depending upon tides and weather, we could end up with even more time. During this period, we will also take the opportunity to travel by boat to the largest puffin colony in the Cook Inlet region where we will have the opportunity to create truly incredible photographs of these birds.
Day 8: On the last day, we will travel back to Anchorage by bush plane. We schedule our flights from around 10am in the morning to ensure we are back by noon. Because this is coastal Alaska, however, there can be weather delays due to fog and rain since all small plane flights are VFR (Visual Flight Rules) only. For this reason, you plan to fly home this day, we recommend you book flights late in the afternoon or evening to ensure enough time to accommodate potential weather delays leaving the lodge.
Highlights
Coastal brown bears galore
Workshop is timed to coincide with the salmon run
Opportunities to fish right along side of the bears
One-on-one photography instruction
A deep dive into the ecology and behavior of bears and the opportunity to witness how they play a critical role in the health and wealth of this landscape
Other potential wildlife subjects: red fox, coastal gray wolves, spruce grouse, bald eagles, horned puffins, tufted puffins, sea otters,
Workshop Leaders
Jared Lloyd has been a working professional wildlife photographer for twenty years and is the founder of PhotoWILD Workshops and PhotoWILD Magazine. Before going full-time with his wildlife photography, Jared worked as a biologist and guide. He has been leading wildlife photography workshops for fifteen years. www.jaredlloyd.com
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