The dangerous sloth bear

I’m in Ranthambhore National Park, India, right now with a photo tour group looking for Bengal tigers. We saw one this morning, but it was too far for a meaningful shot. However, we were able to photograph other animals including this sloth bear. These are not commonly seen, so it was exciting to be able to photograph it. I particularly wanted to show the bear’s claws because they were so pronounced .. and intimidating. The eyes of the bear are deep-set and hard to distinguish amidst the black fur, so I used the dodge tool in Photoshop to lighten them somewhat so they were easier to see. I used a 200mm focal length on a 100-500mm zoom – the bear was quite close to our vehicle – and the settings were 1/640, f/6.3, and 5000 ISO.