The charge

Brown bears will use the tactic of a 'false charge' to scare off potential threats. They will run toward the danger, then suddenly stop, and will sometimes paw the ground all for purposes of intimidation. Trust me, it works. Scared to death was I! I took this picture on the island of Katmai in Alaska, and the charge only lasted a second or two, but the fear in the pit of my stomach was memorable. I wasn't prepared for this type of action, and my shutter speed should have been faster. The image is not quite as sharp as I like, and I could have used a little more depth of field so the nose was sharp, but I'm still grateful I was able to capture this remarkable moment. I was shooting with a 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length, and my settings were 1/250, f/10, and 400 ISO. This image is not cropped.