A little bit about me!
Hey! I'm Jason Bradshaw. I'm a retired electrician, a Raiders fan, an Elvis fan, an animal lover and a Wildlife Photographer!!
I was born, raised and still live in Fredericksburg, Virginia. As long as I can remember I have always loved animals, camping and the outdoors in general. I've always had a dog that's lived inside the house and sleeps in the bed with me too.
A couple decades ago. I got back into camping and backpacking. And then more minimalist, ultralight backpacking. I did quite a few local hikes and overnighters. And then went on to do several multi-night trips. All within a few hours of home. I loved being outside and most of all encountering all the wildlife!!
It was on one of these camping trips when me and my dog (Jeb) were hiking in George Washington National Forest. We were going along just fine when all of a sudden, we came across a mama black bear with 3 cubs!! The mama ran off and the cubs ran up a tree! I had never seen a bear before and I was absolutely scared to death!! All I knew about bears was what little I had seen on TV, which was all bad! I just knew she was going to hunt us down and kill us!!
Well, that didn't happen, and me and my dog lived to see another day. I was absolutely scared to death and incredibly thrilled at the same time! That was the day my fascination with bears began!
In the next several years I learned a lot about bears and had several encounters with them while hiking and backpacking. I learned that they weren't the monsters that people had made them out to be. Unfortunately, most of my encounters were just catching a glimpse of them running away. Only on a couple rare occasions did I get to watch them for more than a couple seconds. I found them fascinating! I was hooked!
I decided to up my backpacking game even more. I wanted more. Something a bit more adventurous! I decided to do a multi-day backpacking trip into The Grand Canyon!! It was absolutely mind blowing and also miserably painful too! But the pain is temporary, and the memories will last the rest of my life! After that experience I took several more trips to Yosemite, Yellowstone and The Grand Canyon again.
For me, these trips and adventures are spiritual experiences. Nature is my church. I believe God created everything. But I also believe there's some places where he was just showing off!! I've been to some of the most beautiful places on Earth, seen the most incredible wildlife and met the most amazing people!
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"I think it's better to be sitting in the mountains thinking about God than sitting in church thinking about the mountains!"
Now, I've graduated on to nicer camera equipment. I shoot with Nikon gear now. I've encountered well over 1,000 bears and so much more!! I have a little camper that I travel with. It's basically a means of hauling my camera around! I've even had a young grizzly bear put his feet up on the side of the camper in Valdez, Alaska!!
I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy doing what I do now! In the recent years I've decided to share some of my images and offer them for purchase. I remember taking every single one of them and every image has a story! I hope you enjoy them half as much as I've enjoyed taking them!
Thank you for visiting, Jason!
During all these trips I had bought several cameras to take with me. I was totally clueless about cameras and photography, but I wanted something better than a phone. Keep in mind this was a long time ago.
Eventually I bought something a bit better. I bought a Canon. I believe it was 10-12 megapixel with an optical and digital zoom. It fit in my pocket, and I could get to it fairly easy.
In 2018 me and 4 other guys did an 8-day, 90-mile backpacking trip through the Thorofare region of Yellowstone NP. Along the trip, I was honestly pretty disappointed in the amount of wildlife we were encountering. This is prime grizzly country and the only one we had seen was a mile away when we were driving around!
But then, on day 5 of the trip, it happened!! I just happened to look out and there was a 400lb grizzly bear!! It was a totally surreal moment! My hiking buddy got his bear spray out while i snapped off as many pictures as I could! (The images to the left). This was like a hit of crack! I was absolutely high as a kite after that!! I had been bit hard by the photography bug!! The rest is, as they say, history.
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