Man VS. Wild

I was looking through my hard drive to day for some photos and came across this one of a bear with it’s mouth around a guys neck. I forgot about these ones I had shot on the vans job. We were shooting the vans campaign with animals and we asked the trainer if he could wrestle with the bear like he did in the movies. He said no problem. They started and it was way more that we expected. When the bear had his mouth around his neck we started tripping out. We did know if we should help him or run. My lighting guy grabbed a light stand and was getting it ready to do some thing with it. Right about then things calmed back down. The crazy thing about this bear is 3 months later it killed a trainer while they were training it for a movie doing something like this. Thats the thing about these kinds of animals is they do not even know the own strength. It was an accident the bear was not trying to heart the guy he just didn’t no how power full he was. On this shoot they treated all the animals with respect and care for them very well. But a the end of the day the are still wild anmils. It just reminded me of how power full this bear was. I don’t think I will be shooting with wild animals any time soon.