Color Of Sun

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Some times as a photographer you can become image blinded. What that means is you have a shot in mind, in this case it was to get over to the Blacktail ponds to try and get the sunset coming off the water, and you are so intent on making your schedule that you are not watching for anything else. The sun was already setting and the ponds  were still about five miles away yet, and there was a tendency to hurry. You’ve had this shot in mind all day and here you are scrambling to get there, late as usual.

Rounding the long sweeping bend in the highway that runs past Yellowstone Picnic area and heads out towards the flats, you look over to check the light intensity which is your gauge as to whether you will make it in time. OK you got maybe 10 mins. based on the slant of the shadows, is that enough time to get there and get set up, can I make it, is the thought that goes through your mind, and yet here is this gorgeous patch of foliage all lit up and waiting for you. Its bright golden yellow just perfect in its color and hue.  Can you pass it up and try and get over to the ponds and get set up in time. Quick calculations go through your mind, I mean here is perfect color and it’s only going to last a few more minutes, do you really want to tear over to the ponds only to be late? The old bird in the hand thing pops up and you pull the rig over to shoot this scene.

So intent on your schedule and program you have not even recognized the old silver back grizzly standing there for what he was. He had been standing still and as your eye swept the scene to check out the color and composition he appeared to be a boulder there in the valley. Until he moved. Not startled but focused on his travel he would soon be out of the frame. Man what the hell were you doing? Are you losing it here? was just one of the thoughts going through your mind as you realized what the situation was. Nothing snaps a wildlife photographer out of his preoccupation and inattentiveness than seeing a grizzly appear magically in your shot. Scrambling to get the camera ready, get out of the rig and shooting before he had traveled far enough that this shot wouldn’t be possible, it was a flurry of action that would be comical later if you got the shot, but tragic if you didn’t.

Fortunately practice and experience and pure blind dumb luck was present enough that the image was made. It is called Color of Sun and the grizzly is gratuitous. Blacktail ponds would have to wait another day.

Stop Look At Me

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Sometimes you’re just walking along minding your own business intent on getting somewhere cool where you can take incredible pictures. Someplace where the light is fantastic, the content perfect, and all the elements are exactly where they should be. That place is probably down this path, around the corner and will be there right in front of you, the perfect incredible view. You just have to hurry so you get there before the light changes.

In your mind you see the type of images you want and you single-mindedly forge ahead, eyes down, brain shut down to everything but what might be right around the corner. You haven’t been to this spot yet and you haven’t actually seen the views you believe are there but you’re pretty sure they must be. So you don’t look to the right or the left you just plow ahead.

 As a photographer you train yourself to be aware of your surroundings, to look everywhere because that great shot might be right next to you and that works until you let your imagination put blinders on you. When that happens you can pass right by the picture you were looking for. That’s what happened when this picture was taken.

What had been a non-descript image because the light was flat and hidden behind a cloud made this view one you would walk right by, not giving it a second glance. The wall was ok but nothing special and the background wasn’t even noticeable. Let’s go, don’t waste your time here, let’s get to where the good pictures are. Then the sun came out. And like a deep-sea Angler fish dangling its lighted bait in front of it, it highlighted the spectacular lime green leaves to draw you in, painted the grass a beautiful golden orange and caused the small trunks of the willows behind it to go pure black in perfect contrast, and there you were, you were hooked. Here it was the image you had been hunting for, the one you had written off in your mind, right here in front of your face. Your red embarrassed face. You nearly lost this shot. The morale of this story is. Keep your imagination but turn the blinders off. Keep looking everywhere, and most importantly, a picture in your viewfinder is worth two in the bush.

Note: If you want to see this view for yourself go to Aztec Ruins National Monument near Farmington, New Mexico. Take the path to the left and watch. Pay particular attention to the drab, non-descript foliage and when you see the sun come out and the foliage begins saying Stop Look at Me, take your picture.

An Afternoon With Lady Moon

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Yesterday was one of those days where you looked out the window and said “Ok that’s it, I’m out of here.” It was too beautiful a day to stay inside. The sun was shining, there was a slight breeze, a huge sky filled with gorgeous clouds and the seductive possibility that one could spend the afternoon with Lady Moon.

Lady Moon is a valley near Red Feather Lakes in Northern Colorado. It’s a long valley situated over 8000′ between the gently sloping valley walls, it feels close to the sky. Always filled with lush grass, and wild flowers so densely packed it is difficult to walk without stepping on one, it is a hike to take whenever your spirits are low, or even when you’re so happy you can’t stand yourself. The South fork of Lone Pine Creek, a slow moving stream and its attendant wetlands, take up much of the valley floor and meanders down to join other streams helping build the watershed that provides our water. Beautiful stands of aspen in all of their finest greenery line the edges of the valley. It is truly a beautiful place.

As a photographer this is where you want to be on a day like this. Add getting to spend the day with good friends and it becomes a very good day indeed. The other photographer vying for the attention of Lady Moon is a local resident who is fast becoming known as the Prince of Red Feather for his more than accomplished photographic skills. He led the trek which was supposed to be a short hike of a mile or so but turned into a mini marathon. This was not specifically his fault as the person he was shooting with was one of those types that would dart off in a one direction to shoot a picturesque clump of aspen, then dart back to rejoin you only to dart off again in another direction to shoot a clump of mountain iris, rather like when you walk with your dog off the leash and he runs 75 yards ahead, and when you don’t catch up to him quickly enough runs back to you only to run off again to repeat the process. At the end of the walk he has walked 30 miles to your three. That was how a short walk of a mile or so turned into five.

All in all the day couldn’t have turned out better. We arrived back at the trailhead with a camera full of pictures, tired, wet from giving up all attempts to stay dry crossing Lone Pine creek dozens of times and thoroughly satisfied with our visit to Lady Moon. Plans were made to visit Lady Moon again in the fall. Those aspen are going to be absolutely spectacular then.

Through The Keyhole

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On this inspection tour of Yellowstone National Park one of the items on our checklist was to see how bears were doing. Were they prevalent. Were they happy. Did they have nice glossy coats, did they appear well fed. What was their disposition. Did they still have a predilection to eat foreign or domestic tourists who go too close, or flashed them with their flash cameras while they were busy doing bear stuff. Did they have the normal amount of offspring with them. This pertained mostly to the female bears as the male bears had the rather disturbing tendency to eat the cubs. We had many questions to answer and precious little time to ask them, as most bears are reluctant to be interviewed even if it’s for a good cause. So we tried to make the best use of our limited time with them.

We chose to limit our observations to free range bears and not include any of those in the various cages scattered around the boundaries of the park. Cages tend to change the personalities and physical characteristics of the bears, making them fat and goofy, performing stunts and behaviors that they normally would never do in the wild. You will never see a bear, either black or grizzly, we are not certain about Polar bears but since there aren’t any in the park it doesn’t matter, smoking a king-size mentholated cigarette in the wild. Come to think of it we have never seen a bear, either black or grizzly smoking one in a cage either, but the caged ones tend to do equally goofy things so the analogy, though weak and possibly irrelevant, still holds. The Institute has taken a strong position on this situation and that is we do not condone putting bears, or most any other living things in cages. If asked to do so, we just say no.

Access to bears is kind of tricky. Sometimes they will walk right up to you and rifle through your pockets looking for stray food items you might have left in one of your front pockets and other times they can be reclusive and non-communicative, ready to lash out and tear the legs off your tripod. This is when its best not to get too close, instead just call out your questions in a firm but distance voice.

As a recorder of bear behavior one must always have your camera ready even if it means photographing the bear through the keyhole, as it were. Just the because the bear is standoffish and reluctant to have its picture taken we all know that it is for its own good and if the image is Photoshopped properly the bear will come to accept it and perhaps even cherish it later on.

That’s what’s happening here. This was an uncooperative black bear that simply refused all offers of doing an interview as if it simply didn’t care that we had a job to do. Instead it chose to go off and stand behind some foliage. Foliage is the bane of all wildlife photographers. Bears know this and will often use foliage to screw up a picture-taking opportunity. They have the most uncanny ability to position themselves where errant pieces of foliage will obscure the more photogenic parts of their bodies, like their eyes or noses, or when they open their mouths to snarl a piece of branch or leaf will be right where it can goof up the picture the best. The bears take great delight in doing this and will lure the photographer into shooting it and then move itself into the worst position possible. Many times in the heat of the moment the photographer will not realize the wily bear has done this and doesn’t see how cleverly disruptive the bear was until they get back home and see their images on the computer and find that in every single one of the best pictures taken there is a piece of foliage where it shouldn’t be.

If you look really closely at the bear in the image above you will notice telltale laugh lines around its muzzle. These are caused by the bear knowing the frustration it has caused and it likes it. We were incredibly fortunate in this image to catch the bear just before it found a piece of foliage to get behind. But then we’re experts and have to win once in a while.

All in all the bears seem to be doing well and we were able to check off that item on our checklist. They were plentiful and we were fortunate enough to see and photograph two to three different bears a day.

In fact it was almost as if they wanted their pictures taken. Bears are mysterious creatures, you never know what’s going through their minds unless they’re attacking you, then it’s pretty clear. We had other items on our list and couldn’t spend all our time with bears so we left this bear and continued on our mission to completely inspect the park.

Note : To those of you tuning in late the following posts will catch you up on preceding events. There is no extra charge for this service it is included in the cost of admission. We know you don’t want to miss a minute of our fascinating but undocumented report.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/announcement-13/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-passes-inspection/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/ghosts-in-the-darkness/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/you-dont-see-that-every-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/now-are-the-foxes/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/into-each-park-some-rain-must-fall/

Out Of The Darkness

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One of the pure joys of being a photographer is being witness to singular moments of beauty. Sights and events that suddenly appear before you that stop you in your tracks and stun you with their absolute clarity and simplicity. Regardless of what you choose to photograph there will be moments that occur when everything seems to come together to produce an image that sums up why you return to nature over and over again hoping to see an amazing occurrence and capture it.

Walking along the bank of a pond in Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge late one afternoon hoping for a shot of a Black-crowned Night Heron I had spotted earlier before the sun dropped lower making it too dark to shoot into the reeds where they like to stand, this plover suddenly flushed and rose into the air out of the darkness, into the sunlight above the reeds.

As it rose higher the sunlight caught its wings outstretched, highlighting the translucent primary feathers, gently illuminating the soft white under belly with a greenish reflection from the reeds below. The golden light caused the dark area on the back of its head and neck to turn into a gorgeous mahogany hue. My vantage point allowed me to capture it against the dark reeds and nearly black water below making it standout in gorgeous contrast.

These moments last for mere seconds and the plover with a few powerful wing-beats was soon gone, flying off into the distance. My camera had been set for shooting into the darkness of the reeds where I expected the heron to be and it was just sheer luck that those settings worked for this image also. A lot of these situations are serendipitous in that everything is totally spontaneous and unexpected and you have only moments to react and capture the scene. When you do successfully however it simply adds to the need to get back out there and try to make it happen again.

Monument Valley

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This is Monument valley at 6 in the morning. It is cold here even though it is late April. You need a heavy coat and gloves and if you have a bald head like some of us you need a hat. Preferably one of those Russian kind made out of polar bear-wolf hybrids with ear flaps you can tie around your belt loops so the wind doesn’t blow it off. We didn’t need the tie downs this day as there was no wind. You also need lots of determination to stand out here waiting for the sun to come up.

It seems twice as cold as it is when you’re waiting. Stamping your feet helps some. Shivering is good. But what really saves the day is a hot thermos of strong black tea. No sugar, no milk, black as my last wife’s heart, as they say around the campfire at divorce school. That’s what gets you through the waiting, that and the thought of how gorgeous it’s going to be in a few minutes.

Everyone has seen pictures of Monument valley’s butte’s and spires, the colossal towers and the long views down the valley from John Ford’s point. They are the reasons many people come here, but there are other smaller views that are just as captivating. This one for instance.

Back behind the Totem pole and Yei Bi Chei is a place that is off-limits to visitors unless you have a guide. My guide whose Navajo name loosely translates to “Looks In My Wallet”, no I’m kidding, it actually means “Reaches Into My Wallet”, no, wait, I’m kidding again, it actually means Ed, brought me to a perfect spot to watch the sun come up behind the Totem pole. Behind where we had set up the camera gear was this dune and overhead our timekeeper the moon moving across the sky, clearing it of any obstacles that may hinder the sun’s passage. Ed said he liked this spot not only for the view of the sunrise, but if the wind was blowing which it does with startling frequency here in the valley, it was a protected place. The way he said it, in that low Indian voice made it sound much wiser than it really was. That’s one of the reasons you need a guide, you’d never figure that out on your own.

Ed was an interesting guy in his own right. He has been a stuntman in the movies, riding horses, falling off of them, “you don’t need much training for that ” he said, an extra in many of them, a guide around the valley and a sought after one at that, as he photographs the valley himself and knows all the good spots. He also tends to have a store of helpful tips for the visiting photographer. “When you fall and roll down the dune try not to get sand up your nose” was one of his favorites. “Don’t touch that it’s poisonous” was another. He said this even if what you were touching was actually poisonous or not. All in all he was a good guide and we weren’t lost for very long anyway. “An Adventure” he said, “to  tell your grandchildren.” I don’t think we were lost, I just think he liked to see me carry 40 lbs. of gear through ankle-deep sand.

But the places we went were worth every moment of Ed’s wit. I remember this one the most because it seemed to be more about the desert than all the daytime shots of the monuments and far-reaching vistas put together. As there was no wind the silence was complete, except maybe for Ed’s wheezing, and the far off calling of a raven waking up, and the colors, the colors were something you had to experience. They began to form out of the darkness and became richer and more intense as the sky lightened. The deep nearly mahogany color of the sand against that impossibly blue sky. The yellow highlights on the Rabbit brush just becoming visible and of course the moon, impossibly white against the background of the heavens. This is why one becomes a photographer. For the image of course but also for the memories. And maybe for the chance of a brief visit with Ed. No, it’s the memories.

Animal Portraits – Bull Elk

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Today is Back to Basics Friday where we trek back into the archives and dig through our dusty collection of old photos to find one of our crumpled up, dog-eared images from the heady days of yester-year. Back when our cameras were full of fresh unused pixels and the sight of a gorgeous 6 point bull elk at the height of the rut was supercharged with excitement. Lets bring it out and dust it off and see how it stands up to scrutiny today.

It was a cold damp morning in late September in Yellowstone. The overnight rains were just tapering off along the Madison river, the mist was subsiding and the sun was trying mightily but unsuccessfully to brighten up the day and burn off the chill. You could walk through the wet grass and never make a sound other than the soft squelching of your boots as you moved across the saturated meadow. The bull was fixated at the sight of a rival that had just entered his space and he bugled his warning in a raging bellow as we crept up on him. Normally he never would have allowed anyone this close and would either have charged or run away but this was the rut and his attention was fixed solely on the interloper. He had his cows bunched up close and wasn’t even allowing them to go down to the river to drink. They were nervous with their heads up and watching the new bull approach, this years calves hugging tight to their sides. The answering challenge from the other bull had him mesmerized. The entire situation was super-charged with emotion and you could feel the tension in the air as a tangible thing.

A moment like this, when you are out amongst Nature, doesn’t stay static. It’s fluid and dynamic, changing second by second. In an instant this bull will decide whether to charge and fight or drive his cows to a different part of his territory where he can better defend them. As a photographer this the point where you too have a decision to make.

Watching  the situation develop do you take the shot now or wait for the next scene to unfold. Is this the point where you back up and remove yourself as the activity has become too frenzied and there is a risk of being drawn in and becoming a participant rather than a spectator, or do you stay and get that one last close-up. As you can see the decision was made to stay and take that last close-up. The next instant he had charged off to confront his rival. The moment was over.

It is amazing how much memory is attached to these photos. After taking thousands upon thousands of shots as you look at them you can remember the smallest detail of each event. What things smelled like, how the air felt, what sounds were being made. Where you were, whether you were scared or incredibly excited or both, to be involved with real life on this level. It all comes back in a rush. And that’s what wildlife photography is, a rush. It happens while you’re involved in it and later as you review it by seeing your images again.

Next time on Back to Basics Friday we’ll see what else is back there in the archives and what other memories can be dredged up. After all there are as many stories as there are images and they’re all meant to be shared.