Brown Bear - Ursus Arctos

I had the most exclusive photography experience in my life so far. I had the opportunity to photoshoot Brown Bears from a hide in Martinselkonen, Kainuu, Finland. There's appr. 40 different brown bears living in this area near Russian border(only 1km away). So it's real wildlife, not a zoo.

This shot was taken from a small 2 person hide by a hot and humid bog (outside temperature was around +32C, and inside it was more like +35C, and of course no ventilation, because the bears are all around and CLOSE...). It was so hot that when we arrived to the hide at 4 pm, we had to strip our clothes, to nothing but the underwear :) Luckily my photography mate was a lady too ;). I was afraid of the mosquitos at first, but to my surprise there weren't so many of them. Lucky for us, 'cause they would've eaten us alive. During the night we were able to see almost 30 different bears of different ages. We also managed to see one white-tailed eagle flying around the bog. The guide came to collect us from the hides at 7 am.

This is a mother of two last year's cubs. Tomorrow we're gonna spend the night in small hide by a pond in the bog. Hopefully we will see bears swimming.

Now this is a Wildlife, isn't it?

The GREAT BROWN BEAR VIEW...