A photo shoot with Hugo

I have taken a lot of pictures on the new camera.  I have not experimented much with the new camera.  Most of what has been taken was on the lens I purchased with it, a 1.8/55mm fixed lens.  The mega pixels on the camera allow for beyond decent enlargement of what I shoot, but with that comes any distortion from movement.  I know I need a bigger lens.  I do have a 300mm lens from the old camera, but it requires an adaptor since the old camera and lens have a mirror system and the new is mirrorless.  I decided to shoot a few pictures on the old lens with the adaptor on the new camera and see how they turned out.  I would need a model, and that would be Hugo.

This is the story of Hugo from Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

Hugo is a female grizzly from Hugo Mountain near Kotzebue, AK. Two men riding snow machines found her in November 2000 with hundreds of porcupine quills embedded in her paws. She was severely dehydrated and malnourished and was unable to walk or eat when brought to AWCC. Although she has made a good recovery, she cannot be released into the wild because she does not have the needed skills to survive on her own. Hugo was the first bear to be given a permanent home at AWCC. 

Another way to put the story is how the staff described it on my last day at the AWCC.  "Hugo made a poor life decision as a tiny cub and tried to eat a porcupine."

So now Hugo spends her days here at the AWCC, roaming about with that crazy instep that grizzlies seem to have.

Although her range is a fraction of the size a grizzly would normally have, she has loads of space and grass and stream and pond compared with a zoo bear.  She shares the enclosure with two younger coastal brown bears...they are much bigger than her now, but they get on alright.

This is Hugo stopping a moment to take in the warm spring air.  It's a good day to be a bear I think.  At least I hope this is still Hugo.  It's pretty easy to tell her apart from the two larger bears when you see them all together.  But 3 months later reviewing pictures only it gets a little tougher to tell everyone apart.

After a while, Hugo decided to sit down on her butt and watch the world beyond.  I love how she gazed out at the mountains, it seemed a very soulful thing to do.  And a cute thing to sit on her butt on the hillside like that.

As she decided to step down, the camera caught her in the illusion of being a tightrope walking bear!

One last shot of Hugo.  I think the mirrored lens on the mirrorless camera takes away a little of the clarity, but none of the beauty of this little-big bear, Hugo.  I can guarantee there will be more photo shoots with this little girl in the future.