American Black Bear

By Barry Spruce on May 4, 2020

Cherry Pie

This is one of my 1st Black Bear images to sell off the charts. In fact many of you still following my page have this framed print hanging on your wall. Taken back in August of 2010 over 10 years ago, it is an image that is the topic for today.

Todays topic is sharing photography. Many novice nature photographers run around with the same people most of the time. That is not what I am talking about today. As my career began to take off, I found great fun in sharing my skills and knowledge with others. I would buy a piece of photo gear from someone local and invite them to shoot with me. A week later there would be a new member to the local photo club, and I would ask them to join me on a photo shoot. You get the idea.

Some years later, I began having people ask me to guide them. Some are from the South Eastern US and some much further away. In the last few years, I have even had a few international travelers commission me to guide them. Like teaching, it has been very gratifying sharing Nature and Wildlife Photography with others and doing it for a living now for 13 years come June.

But the photography sharing I want to tell you about today is much more simple and gratifying than all the above. My favorite sharing is with family. This is especially true of sharing photography with your children. Both my children were raised here in East Tennessee, and they don’t miss a trip to Cades Cove when they return to the area. They grew up with a father who had them hiking, fishing and in the woods most of the time. Of course I was always toting a camera around with me everywhere we went.

My daughter graduated high school and went off to college. When she returned, she became my social media advisor. She also was in charge of my images and storage of them on drives and in LightRoom. She is married now and has a family of her own. They return around once a year, and she usually visits the Smoky Mountains with them just as I did with her.

My son is a Navy man and has been for 11 years now. He is active Sea Duty which means he is away from the US as much as 6 months a year. He calls home Whidbey Island in Washington state. He rarely makes it home to Tennessee, but when he does it usually means a trip to Cades Cove, and if it is in the Fall, a UT football game. I wanted to tell you about this family sharing of nature and photography for all these reasons mentioned and more. You see, I will never forget the day I took this image. My son and I were spending the day together, and I decided it would be a good time to give him a photography lesson. I set him up with a camera/lens combo and gave him a quick lesson. By 8:30am we were on a momma and (3) 2nd year cubs. Now usually momma bears release their 2nd year cubs on their own by August. They ate from a cherry tree and my son was having the time of his life snapping away at the 4 bears.

All of a sudden the cherries were running out, and they left. We were thinking about leaving when I spotted another Black Bear peaking from the woods. Everyone else had just left, and she was making sure it was safe to go to the cherry tree. She came out with (3) young cubs about 8 months old. Together we photographed the family in the tree. You see the older cubs couldn’t get the cherries on the smaller limbs because of their heavy body weight. This was not a problem for the younger and smaller cubs. During this photography sharing time with my son I was able to get this shot entitled “Cherry Pie”. Thank you all for following my page and all your financial and moral support through my career.