TomKal foto

The decision taken upon receiving the information that there’s a huge possibility to photograph bears and wolves in one place could have been only one – it is necessary to go there. Having my own pictures of the bear was admittedly not among my most important photographical plans, but pictures of wolves – it is an entirely different issue. During the photo session however, I changed my mind. If there was an opportunity to take pictures of the two species, which are so interesting and difficult to photograph, at one time, especially if we take into consideration the activity of these species, the whole situation looks almost surreal. Another issue is  the question of safety. When you photograph birds that weigh a dozen or so grams or even several hundred grams, there is nothing dangerous in it. An encounter with a bear or bears that weigh several hundred kilograms each is a completely different story, and a risk, especially that at night, during the time of the bears’ most intense activity, you have to stay in a hide, in the forest.  I have taken photos from many various hides, but the bear hide, or the wolf hide is so different, both physically and from the point of view of the time spent in it. If you want to take some photos of predatory birds you need to be in the hide an hour or two before the dawn or you must be just well camouflaged. In case of a bear hide, you have to enter it in the early afternoon, as going there during the night is simply dangerous. Awaiting starts, as you have to have a little luck to have the animals active in front of your lenses before the dusk or at the dawn, when there is still light, which makes you able to photograph them. As you can see from the photos presented in the gallery, the Bieszczady mountains turned to be favorable for me, disclosing a little bit of their beauty, which I managed to capture and share with the others. All this however is not enough to take such photos. Without Bogdan, the organizer of the workshops nothing would have come out of it. Bogdan, thank you for the excellent organization and atmosphere, without which, well, at least for me, even the best pictures wouldn’t make me happy. Just such a way of spending time, observing and photographing nature in great atmosphere in the company of people who share similar interests is probably the most important thing, it is priceless, enables you to relax and is incomparable with anything. We managed to experience all this in this beautiful part of our country. The observation of bears was a new experience for me. When you are sitting in the hide, awaiting bears, your emotions are accumulating from minute to minute. Are they going to appear or not? And then suddenly, stepping slowly and grandly, a several hundred kilograms male is emerging from the woods. He commands a huge respect and builds distance between him and the surrounding environment. The emotions are hard to describe. Then, another one, smaller than the first one, third, fourth, and after the dark, just for a moment, a female with two young bears appears. The young, at their mother’s signal, clambered on a tree. Unfortunately, the conditions did not enable me to take good pictures, but for the sake of a memo I have uploaded even such lower quality photos to my gallery. Bears appeared an hour or two before the dusk and disappeared at the dawn. Sleeping in a hide you have an impression as if you were sleeping in an enclosure with bears and wolves, from which you are away  only a dozen or so meters and from which you are fenced only by the hide’s wooden wall. When you look at the black mighty silhouettes of bears at night, you experience incredible feelings. Of course, there was no possibility to capture that in photos due to lack of light. As usual, some of the observations from the photo expedition stay in my memory, and I hope that they will stay there forever…