Out of the woods

This is not the actual bear. My pictures are horribly out of focus.

It is becomning increasingly common for wild animals to find their way into our everyday lives. It hit a little closer to home the other day when I was alerted to a bear in my front yard. The pretty sizable bugger was sauntering around the yard like he/she owned it. I grabbed for my camera thinking since I am a photographer I could get a good picture for posterity. In my excitement I was fumbling, trying to get the camera off Manual and into Auto mode, take the lens cap off and shoot while it was walking away. Not being satisfied with an out of focus image I went after her/him and started shooting while I was running. Needless to say all I got were more out of focus pictures. The bear eventually walked back into the woods never really knowing or caring that I was trying to preserve this experience.

Now all this being said, I would highly recommend checking out Amy Stein's photo project called Domesticated. She has done a brilliant job showing the relationship between humans and wild animals and the impact on our domesticated life and the effect it has had on the animals behavior. You can see it here: http://www.amysteinphoto.com/domesticated.html

I've been living north of NYC for about 17 years now and this is a first. Coyotes, Deer, Turkeys, and all of the regular critters have become a normal occurrance...but not Bear.