A few years ago, I visited Campbell River on Vancouver Island as part of a wildlife photography workshop. We spent several days on the water chasing whales and other marine mammals, as well as both grizzly and black bears. I fell in love with the place and left that trip thinking that it would be great to bring my wife and kids up. Fast forward a few years (and a pandemic), and I finally made it back with the family in tow.

With the kids along for the trip, we obviously didn’t spend days on the water chasing wildlife from dawn until dusk. Instead, we had a relaxing time at a fantastic hotel, and combined that with venturing out into the wilderness as a family. The kids really wanted to see whales and dolphins, and so we booked a full day excursion with Wild Waterways. The day we had picked originally was absolutely pouring rain, and the folks at Wild Waterways were kind enough to move us to the next day where it wouldn’t be a deluge. That worked out great and we got to see a ton of marine wildlife, including a humpback whale breaching! That’s something I hadn’t seen before, much less photographed, and it was a blast to watch the kids get so excited too!

The R5 + the 100-500 were brilliant out on the water, and I primarily relied on the eye tracking autofocus mode, with servo focus enabled, and configured for animal mode. I was really pleased with the results and found this combination incredibly fast to lock focus, especially on animals out of the water (such as a breaching whale). Mostly, I didn’t need to think about focus and instead was able to enjoy shooting and watching the kids enjoy the wildlife. The only time focus was problematic was with whales or other animals close to the surface of the water. I found that confused the focus tracking somewhat, and so for animals like the dolphins I switched back into point focus mode.

Below are a few of my favorites from our time on the water!

Besides spending time on the water, we also spent some time hiking and looking for bears. There’s a spot just outside of town that’s a popular place to see black bears feeding on salmon, and the salmon had started running, so we went a few times to look, but were unsuccessful. On the day after our boat tour, I met up with Stan Novotny and his family and we went looking. We had five adults and five kids on a mission to find some bears. After about a 15-20 minute walk, we came upon a very large black bear gnawing on a salmon while sitting on a rock in the river. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say we came upon a gaggle of people watching a large black bear in the river, as we saw the people first.

The bear didn’t seem to mind our presence, and we watched for a while as he fished. The kids were ecstatic to get to see a bear up close and personal like that, as he was roughly 20-30 yards away. Earlier in the week we had seen a black bear at a distance of about 15 feet after he snuck up behind me while focused on eating berries, but we didn’t get to watch him for very long. This was much different and the kids were in awe of the bear as caught another big fish and went to eat it. After a while, another bear appeared and started fishing as well, albeit unsuccessfully. Finally, they were joined by a third bear that looked very similar to the first bear (maybe they were related?). So, three bears about 20-30 yards away fishing for salmon while the family looked on. How cool is that?

Needless to say, we had an awesome time. The rest of our week was filled with some hiking, exploring the town, time in the pool with the kids, and playing giant chess on the back lawn of the hotel. I think everyone agreed that we’ll have to come back soon!