I have talked before about my obsession with getting really close to wild Alligators. Here in the Mountains , the go to dangerous animal to photograph is the Black Bear.
For some reason I was cursed with the inability to take a decent photo of a wild bear, but that hasn't stopped me from trying.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is known for its bears and a visit without seeing a bear is a giant disappointment. When one of these bears shows its face it can brack up traffic for miles.
See! All these people lining up to take horrible pictures of this little guy.
That thing in the middle that looks like a blob of nothing is actually a bear in a tree.
Disappointed in my inability to photograph the majestic and savage creatures, I took to instead taking pictures of the "Bearparratzi" instead. Bears draw more gawking photographers then Paris Hilton.
The other aspect of Beartography is that getting close to bears is somewhat dangerous do to the fact that bears have been known to kill people. There are of course some people that don't give bears the respect that is necessary. Like these 60s kids I found on these vintage slides.
Of course people have not gotten smarter over the years. Check out this man getting way to close to a bear in a field.
Standing behind me there was about a hundred people standing back talking about how freaking stupid this man was. That said, he probably got alot better pictures then they did. No word on if he survived this encounter.
I must admit that on a few occasions I have gotten a little to close to bears myself. Part of my strategy is to make sure I am not the closest person to the bear, that way I just have to outrun the other person and not the bear.
I can't believe I risked my life to get that sucky picture. I walked down the road by myself after that photo was taken waiting for my wife to pick me up and it turned out the bear was actually stalking me.
Of all the blurry, crappy, indistinguishable photos I have taken of bears, this is the best I have done.
All I had to do was chase a baby bear through the woods and hope that his mom didn't pop out from behind a tree and rip my face off.
Maybe its best to just stick to The Pits.
The Carpetbagger
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