“I’m often mind-blown when I see the photo show up on my camera,” Sonny Parker tells me. He lives in the small town of Haines Junction, Yukon, alongside one of the largest populations of grizzly bears in the territory. 

In recent years, Parker has become a bit obsessed with camera traps — remote cameras that allow him to capture images of wildlife when he’s not there. The thing about these kinds of cameras is a lot of the photos are “just garbage,” he tells me.

“Inevitably … you put all this effort and time into setting them up and in certain ways, and then often come back and check them two weeks later, only to find out there was a twig in front of them being blown by the wind and triggering the camera.”

The Narwhal hired Parker to photograph grizzly bears and the people who call Haines Junction home for an in-depth feature about what it’s like to share space with these massive mammals. People in the small community are proud of their positive relationship with bears, Parker tells me. 

And while he’s still working out the kinks of remote photography, the more than 80 photos he submitted for us were absolutely stunning.

“Every once in a while you get those one per cents … and then it also motivates me to keep going,” Parker says.I sat down with Parker to get into the weeds with him about how exactly he photographs grizzly bears and what he hopes people learn from seeing these photos. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

These photos blew me away. Can you walk me through your process? 

So when most people think of camera traps, they might think of like your typical kind of game camera that you can strap to a tree really quickly. They run on a bunch of AA batteries, and those can provide really great photos and videos these days, but they’re not really the same quality that you’d get out of a proper DSLR or mirrorless camera.

The idea is [a DSLR camera] can all be self-contained in this protective housing, and then the lens pokes out the front end here. So this would basically be wirelessly hooked up to this infrared sensor, which is the same idea as the game cameras that most people have, but this way I can customize where I put the sensor, which is actually going to trigger the camera to fire. There’s a bunch of components, and I can customize the frame rate, how many photos and then obviously where the flashes are positioned to get the lighting that I’m hoping for. 

So that photo of the bear climbing the tree, that had a flash associated with it?

That’s right. That was on a rub tree, which they use a lot to communicate to other bears what they’re doing in the area and that type of thing. Those nighttime photos definitely need flashes. I do try to avoid, as much as I can, using flash with certain species because they can be a little bit disturbing, and I try to do my best to eliminate any factors that can disturb the animals. Obviously, you can’t eliminate all of that, but I really try to put the effort in to do my best.

How long does it take? 

Some of the locations are easier to get to, and if I’m really experimenting with some new equipment, I might try in a more easily accessible area where I can go every few days on foot to check it. But usually, once I have my system pretty dialled, I’ll try to avoid checking the camera too often just to eliminate that extra piece of the disturbance puzzle by just me being in the area. So I try to leave them in an area where I only need to go back every two or three weeks.

But most of the time is just putting in the research and exploring before I even carry a camera around and figuring out where grizzly bears have been using areas, talking to lots of local people that have been here a lot longer than I have. Lots of people are willing to share — a big shout-out to my friend and also professional photographer Peter Mather, who’s from the Yukon as well. He’s done tons of camera trapping over the years and has actually been a huge mentor to me in everything photography-wise. So he’s been really generous with his time and sharing advice and how to best go about using camera traps and in wildlife situations.

Tell me a little bit about access to grizzly bears and living in Haines Junction.

Haines Junction is a beautiful little town. I think the population is just a bit under 1,000 these days. It’s just on the edge of Kluane National Park and Reserve in southwestern Yukon, which is a hot spot for grizzly bears. People have been coexisting with grizzly bears in the Haines Junction area for thousands of years.

There’s been histories of conflicts that happen everywhere, but in my mind it’s a really special place because people tend to have a higher tolerance of bears just in and around the communities than a lot of places, especially in regards to grizzly bears. It’s pretty special that way. I think people just inherently acknowledge that grizzly bears have been living here for longer than people have, and most people really try to do what they can to continue that relationship. 

Why are you specifically interested in trying to photograph bears, given how challenging it can be?

They’re just such special creatures. They’re super smart. Each bear has such a unique personality, and I think it really makes them quite relatable from a human perspective. Because of how charismatic they are as individuals, it makes them fun to photograph. 

And then also just because they are these huge, powerful animals that can cause a lot of damage if there’s conflict situations, and there’s this inherent fear of them built into people naturally as these large animals that can kill you. But they’re so conflict-avoidant naturally, and I’d like to think most people are that way as well. In that regard, it just really makes it super interesting to bridge that gap, and hopefully having some intimate images can help people see bears in a different way. Often the media really promotes these kinds of negative conflict-based stories and I’m hoping that some visuals can help tell the other side of the story.

I was particularly blown away by the photo where there are mountains in the background, and it’s sort of a flat area, and there’s a pretty big bear just staring directly at the camera. Can you talk a little bit about how you created that photo?

So that was definitely one where I used a camera trap. That bear had probably come out of hibernation a couple weeks before. Usually grizzly bears den up in the alpine and then they move down to valley bottoms as the snow melts to access those first plants that are greening up. In some areas in the mountains around here, there’s mountain goats and Dall sheep that are having their babies. They’re not excellent predators in general, but if they can get a chance at coming across a young lamb or a young mountain goat kid that hasn’t quite got its legs under it yet, they’ll definitely try to take those. So I thought it would be pretty neat to find some of these alpine areas where bears might be looking for baby sheep or baby goats.

It probably was about a two-hour hike from the highway. Not super tough, but lugging all that heavy camera trap gear, it adds up, especially when you have to go back a few times to check the camera. So this one, I think, I had out for about two weeks, give or take. As soon as I was walking up to where I knew the camera was, I noticed the camera wasn’t there. So I was like, ‘Oh, am I going crazy, or did something happen?’ And then I look, and the camera’s 15 or 20 feet down a little rocky cliff, and it’s all bashed up. The lens was kind of bent sideways.

I didn’t have these nice housings that I do now. So the camera not only had it tumbled down, but it had been exposed to rain and stuff. So I couldn’t even turn it on when I checked it. I packed up everything, hiked back down and hiked back home. Luckily, the memory card was still fine. I got back home and put it in the computer and sure enough, the first photo I saw was just this blur of rock and sky, I think triggering as it was tumbling down the cliff. And then I flicked through a few of those, and then the next photo I saw was that amazing big round bear face. 

We’re in this new age where there are a lot of fake images on the internet. Has anybody ever asked you before if this is AI?

No one, no one has asked me, but I think the world of AI and image generation is progressing so fast. It’s mind-blowing. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future I start getting more and more questioning of certain types of photos, especially those photos that are really unique. It’s a little bit troubling for sure to guess where this world of AI and image generation is going. But part of me wants to believe that there’s always going to be ways to create really special images that AI will never quite be able to replicate.

What do you hope people take away from seeing these bears up close?

Just being able to get an intimate view into a bear’s world. And hopefully instilling that respect, but maybe dissolving a bit of the fear factor. That would really be my main goal. It’s hard because everyone has different reactions to these things. But if people can somehow find ways to view these animals through a lens of maybe curiosity versus fear as their first reaction, that would be my main hope. Because ultimately curiosity leads to more caring and more questions and ultimately, hopefully, more willingness to facilitate coexistence.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.