Nearby forest preserves teem with opossums, raccoons and other photogenic wildlife, but veteran Naperville nature photographer Jack Brennan prefers to shoot much bigger beasts. And he is willing to range far afield to find them.
To get the shot of a grizzly bear that won first prize in the animal category at the recent 23rd Annual Danada Nature Art and Photo Show, Brennan traveled to the Katmai Preserve in the Aleutian Islands, off the Alaska Peninsula. For years, he has traveled to Alaska in summer also in search of humpbacked whales.
Brennan also has made frequent trips to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada’s northernmost seaport, to photograph polar bears roaming the ice of the Hudson Bay in search of seals, their principal food. Unfortunately for seals, the big white bruins can sniff out seal dens buried under thick layers of ice and snow.
“They’re beautiful mammals,” Brennan said of polar bears, which can stand 11 feet tall and weigh more than 1,000 pounds as full-grown males. Females tip the scales at 400 or 500 pounds.
“Polar bears are basically on the decrease, though, which could be due to man hunting seals and eliminating the bears’ food sources, encroaching on their environment, or hunting them,” Brennan said. “I want to get the word out that polar bears should be left alone and helped to propagate.”
To spread the word about the importance of preserving wildlife, Brennan presents several dozen slide shows each year at schools and libraries. His next show, “Land of the Polar Bear,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec.10 at the Hinsdale Public Library.
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Brennan, who is retired, was trained in photography while stationed with the armed services in Korea during the 1950s. He began specializing in nature photography in the early 1970s. In recent years, his photos have appeared in books, nature and travel magazines and other publications.
Brennan said he chose to focus on whales because of his longtime love of the ocean. His interest in polar bears was prompted in part, he said, because “there are only two places in North America where you can study them–Hudson Bay and the Bering Sea area in the northern portion of Alaska.”