Bearizona Wildlife Park

Author's Comments

I will be honest about what this place is and what it is not. Bearizona is a wildlife park, and the animals live in enclosures, and no amount of ponderosa pine in the background will make a photograph here feel like the backcountry. That is fine. Once you stop trying to make it something it is not, the park gives you something useful: close access to North American animals that you would almost never see this clearly in the wild, set against a forest that genuinely is northern Arizona at seven thousand feet. Morning is the only serious time to be here. The bears move in the cool hours and sleep through the heat, and the light through the ponderosas at eight in the morning has that high-elevation clarity that flattens nothing. Bring a 200mm at minimum. Longer if you have it. The drive-through sections require you to work through a car window, which is its own discipline, and the best frames I have made here are tight - a bison's eye, the wet black of a bear's nose, the particular way wolf fur catches backlight when the animal turns its head. Fall is my favorite season for this place. The aspens at this elevation go yellow in late September and early October, and a black bear against yellow leaves is a photograph that does not need much from you beyond patience and a steady hand. Skip the middle of the day. Come early, work the drive-through first while the animals are moving, then walk the lower section when the light gets harder. Treat it as portraiture and it rewards you. Treat it as landscape and it will not.

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