Tag Archives: Hayden valley

Breakin’ The Rules

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BreakingTheRules7545Click to Enlarge

Breaking the rules. Breaking all of them. Photographically that is. That’s what I do anyway. Break ’em, worry about them later. This image breaks almost every rule of photography there is, yet it is one of my most favorite images that I have ever taken. I say almost every rule only because I know there’s a rule somewhere I’ve forgotten but I know I broke it anyway. This was not a premeditated decision on my part. I didn’t decide to fly in the face of convention just to be a rebel it was more along the lines of, I want this picture and I’m going to get it even if it means breaking the rules.

If you Google ‘Photography Rules’ you will come up with about 105,000,000 hits for rules. That’s a lot of damn rules. Granted not all 105,000,000 hits are different but even so, Geezum Plutz that’s a lot of rules. That’s one thing we do pretty good as a species, making rules. Here are just a few examples of collections of rules.

10 Top Photography Composition Rules

5 Easy Composition Guidelines

18 Composition Rules For Photos

The 10 Rules of Photo Composition (and why they work)

9 Top Photography Composition Rules You Need To Know

And there are folks out there that will tell you “Don’t you go breaking any of those rules.” if you want to be a photographer. You can’t be in our photo show if you don’t follow these rules. “Hey Bozo, I saw your work. You need to follow the rules, man.” Seems like everyone is an expert when it comes to rules, especially the guys that make them.

There are real photographers out there looking at this image right now that are gnashing their teeth and raining curses down on my head for deliberately showing this bollixed up, rule breaking image as if I had a right to. Which I do by the way. I’m one of those artist types that believe once an image is completed it exists. It doesn’t matter how it was made, or what was done to it afterwards, or whether it was Photoshopped or not, an image is an image and it stands on its own for better or worse. You can shoot it holding the camera behind your back and jumping up and down, or put little red hearts all over it, or draw, paint or step on it with muddy boots then sign your name. It doesn’t matter, an image once it’s finalized and put on display is there and it’s up to the viewer to figure out whether they like it or not. Or even consider whether it is art or not.

Look in the back of any photography magazine on the newsstand and you will find dozens of highly trained, apparently successful photographers willing to take you on workshops and teach you how to make beautiful pictures by sticking to all the many rules in force that will make you a successful photographer too. Unfortunately I’ve always had a certain degree of difficulty in following rules. Some of them anyway, but especially those that say you need to create in a certain way. I guess it’s because that I, like Mick Jagger, don’t keep regular hours, so my outlook is different from most.

So getting back to the picture, “What’s wrong with it?” you ask. It’s an image of a wolf swimming across the Yellowstone river late in the evening in mid-may back in 2006. The sky was overcast, it had been raining just moments ago and this wolf was one of the dominant members of a pack in the Hayden valley. They had killed an elk on a small tributary called Alum creek which feeds into the Yellowstone and were gorging themselves until they could barely move. She, this was a female, was the first to leave because being the alpha she had fed first and was ready to return to the den which was located on the other side of the river. The problem and the first of many rules that were broken to get this image, was that she was way too far away for this to be any kind of decent shot. The rule says you have to be close and fill the frame with as much wolf as will fit in it to make this any kind of acceptable picture. The wolf of course didn’t know she was breaking the rule and I couldn’t get any closer before she jumped in the river and began her swim across it. I said the hell with it and took the picture anyway.

My equipment then was somewhat limited. The camera was a 6mp Nikon D70, a woefully under-powered camera by todays standards, and my lens was an inexpensive telephoto which was all I could afford at that time. There’s another rule shot to hell so to speak. Good photographers always use the best most expensive equipment available.  NO exceptions. The limits of the equipment I had, because of its measly megapixel count, meant that when it was time to print this image it wouldn’t be adequate to be enlarged so that you could see the wolf in all it’s perfectly focused clarity. They are absolutely right, those rule makers. It is kind of blurry and out of focus looking because I did stretch the limits of the image and now it has a kind of painterly pastel looking feel to it, not at all what a good photo should be, but I like it. Maybe you do too, or not.

 I remember exactly how things were the day I took this image. How cold it was, how the air smelled like damp grass, the sounds of the river flowing by and the huffing of the wolf as she swam across the widest part of the river she could have chosen to take. However there is a characteristic that rule makers leave out and that is that intangible feeling one gets when you see an image that you like regardless of whether or not it fits into the Follow the rules category. There have been an awful lot of pretty good painters that didn’t follow the rules, and people tend  to think very highly of them, myself being one of them.That’s what makes breaking the rules work for me. Had I followed them I wouldn’t have taken this picture and I wouldn’t have this image to remember the experience or to share with you, my friends. If you ask me I’m going to tell you to break the rules, break ’em all. It’s worth it.

So as far as rules go I’ll probably continue to break them, as the image is more important to me than various opinions. In case you’re wondering I do take technically good images where many of the rules are followed but I am never one to shy away from gathering what I see and putting it into a viewfinder regardless of what the rules say, after all art and the image are what I most care about.

Just for grins I’m posting the original image below, as it was taken straight out of the camera, to show you how and where the image above came from.

 BreakingRulesOrig7545

Grace and Tranquility

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Grace3818

Grace and Tranquility are recent graduates of Swan Training School and are back in Yellowstone National park as new members of swan society. Their job is to swim the quiet rivers of the park, displaying all the qualities of mature young adults, preening, posing gently in the smooth backwaters of the river bends, projecting an air of beauty and refinement you’ve come to expect from swans.

Those of you who are quick studies will notice that Grace is doing what she was trained to do but Tranquility, her classmate, seems to be missing. This is unfortunate because swans, although beautiful when seen alone are of course doubly beautiful when displayed in pairs and the normal procedure would be for the two of them to show up at their appointed places and work the river together.

It seems that Tranquility, always a willful child had a few problems at Swan Training school and nearly missed her graduation due to some disciplinary problems. A quick note here. Sometime, back around the first of last year, we at The Institute made a startling discovery of the existence of the Swan Training School and wrote about it after infiltrating the school to get the inside story of how young swans are made. You can read about it here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2014/01/17/ . The training we found was harsh and rigorous. It’s a difficult road for young swans and the molding process used at the school is designed to break down individuality and force a form of collective thinking that produces a “Finished Swan”. Many make it through but some don’t. Tranquility was one that had some trouble.

. The training nuns of Our Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage, the nuns who run the school, despaired of Tranquility ever being able to graduate. They were quite firm with her and found her resistant to many of the aspects of swan training despite the measures used to get her “to get her mind right”. Finally they resorted to extreme training procedures, ones similar to those used in a large celebrity religion where there was shunning coupled with intense group crisis intervention methods, until nearly at her breaking point Tranquility agreed to be a “Good” swan. Nervous but convinced they had reached her, the nuns of the Fallen Plumage allowed her to graduate.

One of the events the recently graduated swans look forward to is Spring Break. They’re allowed to spend the two weeks prior to reporting for swan duty to attend the mass gathering of all the young swans at Padre Island and there enjoy the fellowship of their peers, laughing and singing and frolicking in the Texas sun. Being young swans they are expected to comport themselves in a manner that reflects well on swandom in general, which of course most of them do. But then there’s Tranquility.

It was a bad idea to send Tranquility on Spring Break. She fell in with some bad swans. Some really bad swans. Swans that had gone to Spring Break several years ago and never left. Once Tranquility met these kindred souls there was no looking back. Grace did her best to try and convince her to return and take up her life as a Yellowstone swan but her entreaties fell on deaf ears, Tranquility had found her place. Grace left soon after, winging her way back north until she reached the Yellowstone river, assuming her place as a  resident swan in a quiet stretch of river as it flows through the Hayden valley.

Tranquility on the other hand is still down at Padre. She works part-time in an Ink shop called the Quill and Skin pushing tats on unsuspecting young swans who will probably never make it back to their places either. She is very different appearing now and her ex-classmates and the nuns who taught her would never recognize her. She has dyed her wings feathers an emerald-green on one side and fire engine red on the other. Her peers have named her Traffic Stopper. Her long neck is shaven down one side to better display the Kanji tattooed there, the symbols supposedly saying her name, Tranquility, but due to a session with a drunken tattoo artist they say Hotel Bicycle instead. This was pointed out to her, but high on several prescription pain killers she simply shook her beak rings in irritation and went on her way. To her they will always say Tranquility.

Grace on the other hand can still be found at that very wide bend in the river, the one near Mt Mary trail, arriving every spring to take up her place and display the beauty and of course the grace of swans. She thinks of Tranquility often, wondering what her life is like now, but hasn’t had any contact with her since that fateful trip graduation year. Tranquility has been invited to the 3 and 5 year reunions held at the swan school but so far has not responded to any of them. The nuns presume her lost.

The Bad Neighbor

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The neighbor8703

Hey, I didn’t think you was doing nothing so I come over. Whatcha doin? Nothin’, eh.

Yeah, me to.

Did you get a chance to go by that Elk carcass over on Alum creek? I stopped by but there wasn’t a lot there. The wolves been at it.

I know, the bastards, the Hayden’s full of them. It’s getting so you can’t swing a buffalo calf without hittin’ one of them. My nephew, Tooth, yeah the one with the ripped ear, he said they ran him off this calf he took down. There must a been a dozen of them.

Me too, I’m sick of them. I try and kill every one I see but they’re fast. They bit my cousin’s sister-in-law’s best friends daughter, yeah Edna, the one that’s been dropping cubs all over Norris junction, and like to tore her up. She had to run like a little black bear to get out of there.

No I don’t know where is Edna is. How come?

Yeah right, No special reason my ass.

You got any grubs, I am flat starving.

No I don’t want any grass shoots. Has she got you on that grass and water diet again? Man when are you gonna put your paw down and tell her where the bear crapped in the buckwheat? How you supposed to get through the winter eating that crap.

No you know I’m single. What’s so hard about it. Just tell her.

What do you mean you don’t like sleeping in the cheat grass by yourself. Dude you’re embarrassing me. Are you a bull grizzly or not. I never thought I’d see you like this. Remember all the hell we raised when we were kids?

Come on, quit that whimpering. Let’s go tear open a log or something. I heard the Miller moths were starting up on Washburn, yeah we could go up there for a few days. Let her cool down.

Yeah, yeah I know you’re supposed to be digging out the den, but screw that, let’s go.

Of course I know where Edna is. I was just messing with you. We can stop by on our way up there. Huh?, no, why would she tell. Listen Cliff, we have got to get you some red meat. Seriously.

You Shall Not Pass !

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YouShallNotPass2554Buffalo Bull Yellowstone

Early this Spring we are began getting reports of a white buffalo up in Middle-Earth or as it is sometimes known, Yellowstone National Park. The reports were sketchy, sometimes it would be seen ghosting along the banks of the Yellowstone, or high up on a forgotten ridge in the Lamar, or sometimes for unknown reasons riding in the back of an old Dodge half-ton, but the reports were consistent. There seemed to be a white buffalo there and we needed to document its existence. After all, that is the mandate of The Institution. To go where no man has gone before and make up stories about it.

The Institute immediately sent its crack photographic team to locate, photograph and get its hoof print on a contract. If you’re going to track down a ghost and document it for the world to see, you have to monetize the experience and be able to cash in to make the endeavor worthwhile, otherwise it’s just a good deed and there are enough of those going on at the moment. We need some of those big fat green smackaroonies to keep the lights on.

Our team of seventy-three highly trained staff members arrived and quickly fanned out to begin collecting  data on this white buffalo. The reports began trickling in, he was up on the south side of Mt. Washburn licking the side of a pine tree, he was down near Fishing bridge cavorting with the Cutthroats, he had just been seen getting the oil changed in the dodge. When people began hearing about our project the reports went from a trickle to a furious outpouring of information. It was if the public took a strange delight in bringing us these reports, each more fantastic than the last. We began to be suspicious and concerned that some of these sightings were unreliable.

One report that seemed to have some reliability to it was the sighting in the Hayden Valley near the Mt. Mary trailhead. It was one that would not die. Each report was very similar to the others and we began to think we might have hit on something. If you stood on the edge of the road and glassed the tree line there would often be a glint of white back in the trees. Sometimes in the morning when the fog was thick from the Yellowstone river and you could barely make out the dark outlines of the big pines, a ghostly bellow could be heard throughout the valley, echoing back and forth until it faded away in the early morning stillness.

We immediately established base camp at the pullout near the trailhead and set up the tent and satellite transponders to send the data out as soon as we received it. It was here that we also set up the field kitchen, the explorer’s club, the theater, the T-shirt stand, the cut-out of what we thought the Great White, as we had begun calling him, would look like so you could get your photo taken with it as a pricey but tacky souvenir. Security was tight and bracelets were issued to all of the paying customers. This was to keep those pesky park rangers out who were trying to establish authority over what is our property as tax-paying citizens, with the flimsy excuse that commercial activity is banned from our National parks. What a bunch of yahoo’s, like we’d believe that making a buck was illegal. Anyway since it is legal to carry weapons in our national parks our staff was able to reason with them without having to resort to using the AR-15’s we had brought along for self-protection.

Everything was going gangbusters and the support from the public was pouring in, T-shirt sales had jumped 86% in the last 48 hours especially the one with the “I Saw the Great White Buffalo and It Was Bitchin” slogan on it. We immediately tripled the order from our Chinese outlet in Singapore and told them to air freight them here. So with the bailing machine working overtime to handle all those great big fat green smackaroonies, there was talk of franchising this operation to other national parks just as soon as we could fabricate reasons for it.

Then the big one hit. The great White had just been seen on the edge of the meadow and was simply standing there as if it were daring us to come and photograph it. You don’t dare The Institute. We don’t back down from a challenge, or run from adversity. Instead we stand and fight, we endeavor to persevere, and we do the hard thing. The call went out for our more trustworthy interns to take over our sales centers and we grabbed our cameras and headed for the meadow. Calls were going out left and right as we mounted what was nearly a paramilitary operation. “Don’t forget your extra flash cards, make sure you got charged batteries, no tripods those just make buffalo mad.”  Photo equipment was banging  and clanging together matching the sound of slightly overweight photographers grunting and wheezing as they ran to be in the first wave of white buffalo shooters. The excitement was heady and the thrill was on. We charged en-masse into the meadow and that ‘s where we met disaster.

Disaster in the form of Randalf. Randalf the Brown. The horned one. He stood there calmly, waiting for us to come to a stumbling halt, before he uttered those fateful words. “You Shall Not Pass!” There was instant silence as we stopped and stared at each other. The silence grew, the tension mounted, and then the inevitable happened. Someone snickered. Oh man, that was something I think everyone would take back if they could. It was the new guy, a stringer we had hired at the last-minute from the Boise Sun-Times thinking a local would be helpful. He wasn’t.

Without moving a muscle Randalf looked at him, blinked once slowly and there was a dizzying flash of light, a soundless scream and where the luckless Boise guy had stood there was simply a pile of, well, in the old days they were known simply as buffalo chips or sometimes buffalo pies. The fact that the guys camera, an old Nikon D300 with a broken strap was sticking out the pile was the only indication that one of our own was gone. There was no more snickering, in fact you couldn’t find the trace of a smile anywhere. In fact you couldn’t find a trace of anyone anywhere, there was just this giant vacuum as those that were closest to old Boise teleported back to base camp. Some didn’t even stop there, they went straight on to Cody.

That left the leader of the expedition, a fearless soul who didn’t flinch, falter or flee in the face of adversity, to face Randalf alone. There was another long moment  and then another. “Any chance of getting a shot of the white buffalo?” “No” was the simple answer. “Any chance of me getting out this without being turned in to a meadow-muffin?” “Only if you leave this place and never return, now” was the reply. “What if I just step over here to the side and grab a quick shot before I go…” “You Shall Not pass !”

Unfortunately the expedition ended at this point. When our rescue team arrived on site there was no trace of our two original team members and they are presumed lost. We did recover two cameras and the Boise guys wristwatch but that was it. The Park rangers sensing a moment of weakness soon overcame our security and confiscated all of our property which they still maintained was illegal. We never got an accurate count of the money that was seized, they broke our bailing machine and everyone who had bought a T-shirt soon abandoned them in case they ran into Randalf.

All in all this was a complete disaster. We’re in the hole for a bundle, the Chinese want their money for the T-shirts and customs won’t release them because of a conflict with some obscure government regulation. This is a black-eye for The Institute and I have to say I’m worried about our solvency. And worst of all we don’t have a single image of the Great White buffalo. Not one. But I did hear that there is one in a park* just off I-94 near Jamestown, North Dakota. If that’s so then maybe there is a chance of salvaging something out of this. We’ll keep you posted.

* http://www.buffalomuseum.com/

Lifting Of The Night Fog

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MistOnTheYellowstone7874-editYellowstone River Hayden Valley       click to enlarge

By nature I was never a morning person. Getting up at the crack of dawn, looking forward to the coming day, being cheerful and enthusiastic about whatever the day might bring, that never was my strong point. I was more of the “Is my coffee ready yet? What catastrophe is waiting for me today. Who do I have to kill this morning.” kind of guy. Then I got older.

One of the unexplainable things about aging is that every habit you’ve had in your life changes. If you were Type A, now you’re mellow or at least mellower. If you were someone who regularly pounded out 8-10 hours of sleep and couldn’t wait for the weekend so you could sleep til noon, now you’re getting up at 4:30 in the morning and you can’t get back to sleep. I mean you can’t get back to sleep. The sleeping thing in your brain says “no, dude, you’re up, deal with it.” This is one of the most difficult changes to come to grips with.

My dad, who was one for saying sayings, used to say “If you find yourself in hot water, take a bath.” He also said “A bird in the hand makes it really difficult to blow your nose.” So I learned pretty early on which sayings were useful and which weren’t. The ‘take a bath’ one comes in handy for getting through adverse situations, but because it is often a hard thing to do, not many people do it. The ‘bird in the hand’ one, well, that was just dad.

Going to Yellowstone to photograph the park in all its glory was the thing that turned waking up really early into a 14 carat advantage. I was up, the park was too. It was beautiful, what was I doing sitting here drinking coffee when I could be out there doing what I came for. I began to understand what the poor misguided but enthusiastic, idiots had been talking about when they blathered on in their bubbly manner about the beauty of the sunrise and how good it felt to be out and about in the crisp morning air. I almost forgave myself for the black murderous thoughts I had about slowly strangling them in the crisp morning air of their beautiful sunrise, but not quite. Some of them actually would have deserved it.

The biggest shock though was that I had suddenly become one of them. Not the enthusiastic bubbly airhead kind but just the realization that it was beautiful and there was a whole new world to be seen before 10:00 am. and it was ok to be up for it. I was careful to not spread the cheer to those still stuck in the “If god meant for you to wake up early, it would happen automatically” stage of their life, they have enough going on without some jerk adding to their misery. Things would work out for them or they wouldn’t. I recognized the point they were at but I knew I had changed. The gods are nothing if not capricious. It must have amused them no end to have me standing out there in the pre-dawn cold freezing my hiney off waiting for the light to turn so I could get the shot. The worst part of it though was making me enjoy it.

The image above is the sun rising over the Yellowstone river in the Hayden valley on a very cold morning. I was there waiting for it. In fact I had been there early because I was up anyway. And it was worth every freezing second.

He Ain’t Heavy

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HeAintHeavy986Coyote Pups Yellowstone                   click to enlarge

He ain’t heavy, He’s my brother. The refrain from that song plays in my head every time I look at this picture. Spring in Yellowstone means family. The animal world has figured out how to make sure all the creatures get their young born at the best possible time to ensure their survival as individuals, and as a species. So when spring breaks get out-of-the-way because everything that’s going to have young ones is having them.

Besides being a good survival technique its good for photographers too. If you watch what’s going on and keep a sharp eye open you’ll soon be stumbling all over animal kids. You’ll be knee deep in coyote puppies, elk calves, BIghorn sheep lambs, Osprey chicks, antelope fawns, badger babies, every single specie that has two or more members of the opposite sex present will be having offspring.

These coyote pups were born in a small cave in a rock outcropping that was literally 3-4′ from one of the main roads in Yellowstone, not far from a major tourist lookout point at Gibbon Falls. Thousands of cars went by it every day. Thousands of cars wasn’t an exaggeration as the road past Gibbon Falls is a main portion of the loop road that rings the park. If you’re coming up from Old Faithful on the West side of the park you can’t get North to Mammoth or East over to the Hayden Valley without travelling on this road and passing by this family’s home. Within several feet of it actually.

It was amazing how few people saw these guys playing in their front yard, goofing off, waiting for mom to show up with lunch. Photographers saw them though. This coyote den wasn’t too far from a pullout and every day until mom finally got tired of the traffic and noise and moved everybody to a better neighborhood, the pullout would fill up with photographers vehicles and everyone would trudge up the road to set up for the days shoot.

Of course as soon as the tripods and long glass came out the cars going by would slow, their windows rolled down and the tourist’s lament would come forth, “Hey Whatcha lookin at?” Coyotes ” Those puppies?” Yep. “They look like dogs” No answer. “What are they doing?” Sleeping. “Sleeping? Do they do anything else?” No answer. “Have you seen any Elk?” No, we’re watching coyotes. “Well they ain’t doin nothing.” No answer. “Is this all you guys do all day?” Yep. And off they’d go in a flurry of squealing tires and loud music, a look of total disbelief on their face that grown people would spend the entire day watching sleeping puppies. Occasional there would be a brake light if somebody thought they’d seen an elk but mostly it was pedal to the metal to get to the next thing to see.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach to visiting the park. People experience life the way they want to. We can get all evangelistic about it and try to show them the error of their ways ( at least as we think it should be ) but when everything is said and done, if they’re happy so what. They’ll figure things out eventually. In the mean time I’m busy watching sleeping puppies.

Checking In

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checkingIn7439click to enlarge

Things are still slightly chaotic as the various organizations struggle with reopening after the shut down. It’s not just a question of taking down the yellow crime scene tape and  throwing open the gates. The various groups that had been dispersed have to re-gather, check in and get their new assignments. Their new id cards have to be issued and duty schedules have to be worked out. Late arrivals have to be tracked down to make certain the pack is up to full strength and to make sure they’re all present for the final muster before they turn the tourists loose in the park. Logistically it’s just another screwed up monkey dance to get the place up and running again.

Felony VonLupus, master-at-arms of the Hayden pack is seen returning after getting the word out to some of the stragglers that hadn’t checked in yet. She has been working tirelessly to get the pack reformed so they qualify for their elk allotment. If the pack isn’t at full strength they won’t get their kill authorization for their full allocation of elk and buffalo and with it being this late in the season they’re going to have  to work double-time to bring down enough animals as it is, to make it through the winter. Plus this whole shut down thing meant that the instructors, being government employees, had to cease training so they didn’t have sufficient time to get the young wolves up to speed in elk killing let alone how to bring down a full grown buffalo. So they’ll have to spend valuable time on OJT, or on the job training, to turn the youngsters into proper killing machines. There’s going to be a lot of ripple effects from this fiasco.

But problems or not, they’re ready to open this place up for business and get everybody back to work. At least for the next month or two. So I feel better, don’t you?