I don’t tend to seek decisive-moment images. I prefer serenity over intensity, and a preconception based on action is difficult to follow through. This is simply because action in the wild is a crapshoot. If it happens, it happens, but it is not necessarily art in my opinion.
But this image is perhaps slightly different. The detail of the kill is raw and timeless, and this may subliminally elevate the visual impact. This is how I imagine the denouement of a salmon to a big bear in Moraine Creek 5,000 years ago or even five million years ago. The main players in this image have been a constant in a world of huge change— salmon ran up this creek not only before we could Google “Alaska,” but also before Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus, the Roman Empire, and the dawn of man. And at the end of their run, huge 1,000-pound bears were there to eat the salmon—just as in 2017. What an extraordinary planet we live on. It is the wildlife that is the constant and it is the wildlife that we are treating with such shameful disrespect.
Bears and humans are cotenants of the planet—the bears have just shown their habitat greater respect. Any human who thinks he has sovereignty over a bear like this one did not see this guy in action that summer evening. He could have mauled any human in a heartbeat, but he chose not to. He was primeval.
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