Monthly Archives: March 2013

Wolf Pack

Posted on by

BlacktailFlatWolves5642-

I don’t know how many of you have ever seen a wolf pack up close other than scenes from TV or a movie, but it is an entirely different experience in person. Wild things look at you differently, they treat you differently, and unless you are an overt threat they don’t seem to care that you are a human. They are willing to co-exist with you as long as there is mutual respect. This pack is known as the Blacktail Flats pack as it includes the Blacktail flats area in the northern part of Yellowstone National park in it’s hunting range. The pack was fortunate to come across a buffalo carcass near one of the many ponds that are in the area and spent several days taking full advantage of this large meal. This photo shoot took place about 75 yards across a small pond on what turned out to be the last day they were there. That was because there wasn’t anything left to eat when they left late that evening. This grey kept a close watch as it came down for a drink.

BlacktailFlatWolves5659

Since this pack had been feeding on this carcass for several days, they came and went as they felt like it. Occasionally most of the pack would be there and sometimes just one of them.

BlacktailFlatWolves5684

The carcass is being whittled down by the constant feeding. They eat everything, from bits of the hide to breaking the bones open for marrow.

BlacktailFlatWolves5738

Sometime the younger wolves need to be shown who the bull duck in the pond is. This is usually a short lesson.

BlacktailFlatWolves5752

When they get down to the point where there is nothing left but the big main bones in the carcass it takes a little cooperation to get them separated. With both wolves pulling from opposite directions something finally gives and somebody gets a nice big juicy leg bone. That seems to be the end of the cooperative spirit as they don’t share well at that point.

BlacktailFlatWolves5653

They have been eating a lot, almost non-stop, so every so often they take a break and go goof off. Its time to run, roll in the grass, teach the young to behave themselves and just generally work off some of that buffalo.

 BlacktailFlatWolves5655

Even when everyone else can not eat one more bite there is always one who can fit in a little more. After all they don’t know when the next meal is coming so one more bite can’t hurt.

BlacktailFlatWolves5663

OK, enough fooling around, there is still some buffalo left so this job’s not done.

BlacktailFlatWolves5773

The carcass is almost gone. You can see by their stomachs that they have been giving this their all. There were five wolves at the most on this kill during this shoot. There were more wolves in the pack but since all this was taking place in about two hours the entire pack wasn’t there. Supposedly there were anywhere from seven to as many as twelve wolves in this pack.

BlacktailFlatWolves5801

It is very nearly done now. Some of the more experienced members of the pack are taking away pieces of the buffalo for eating later. All that remains is the hide and horns and blood stains in the grass.

BlacktailFlatWolves5854

Starting from a fairly respectable amount of buffalo when the shoot first started there is little left. Some of the younger wolves will come back over the next day or so to glean what ever small parts were dropped and lick the grass. Hopefully the ravens and other scavengers will have missed some.

BlacktailFlatWolves5852

The last wolf leaves with one more small meal and the feeding is over. It now a little past 8:00pm and very nearly dark, in fact we needed flashlights to get back to the cars. The originals of these images are very, very dark, so much so that without the miracle of Photoshop you would have a hard time making out any detail at all. The experience of sharing a meal (so to speak) with these wolves has been a once in a lifetime opportunity and simply incredible.

Sleepy-eyed Doe

Posted on by

Watching from the morning mist

Atmosphere is something we all try to make happen in our images when we get a chance. You need the right conditions and of course the light has to be perfect. Fog or mist or even very subdued lighting due to clouds or other weather conditions are a necessary part of creating this effect. But what can be the most important element of all is that serendipitous event that cannot be planned. That special surprise that happens just because you got lucky. While in Rocky Mountain National Park shooting elk one morning I felt something watching me from behind. I turned and found this mule deer doe staring at me from out of the morning mist. There was no wind, the ground was wet from all the moisture in the air and even the birds hadn’t awakened yet. Everything was whisper quiet. After my taking a few quick shots she soundlessly backed into the brush and disappeared. This is one of those straight out of the camera shots that needed no post processing in Photoshop. What I saw is what you get. This shot is absolutely gorgeous as a large print.

Nick & Eddie

Posted on by
Unusal companions

NIck & Eddie

I have always been fascinated by an animals ability to project what we see as character or a human-like personality trait. Sitting near the window one winter morning holding my brand new camera and reading the manual ( you read the manual too don’t you) these two guys flew up and landed on the top of juniper tree. I only had time for a few exposures before they left for parts unknown. Later as I was processing this shot I thought of the unlikely but cool pairing of these two, kind of like Ratzo and Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy. I know there wasn’t much chance that these guys had seen Midnight Cowboy or that they would have been flattered by the comparison, but I believe that there are a lot of reasons we push the shutter besides opportunity. Whenever I show people this photo in the gallery I always ask them “Which one is Nick and which one is Eddie?”.  Always, always, always Nick is the robin.

Tough Love

Posted on by

Being a grizzly cub can sometimes be a tough job. You have to get up in the morning, follow mom all over because she’s hungry, and if she’s hungry then there is a good chance you’re going to be hungry too. And because you are little you want to eat all the time and all you want is some of that nice warm milk that Mom provides. But like all moms she sometimes wants you to try something new, like some freshly caught and just squeezed Yellow-bellied Marmot.

After she has just spent 45 minutes digging one out of it’s den she is pretty determined that you are going to try some. It seems to be  a fairly difficult task to force down marmot this early in the day and it does not help at all that there are at least 50 or more photographers documenting your every move. The whole marmot eating thing turns out to be a game effort but lost cause because you just can’t handle that kind of food.

Expecting the worst everyone watching waited apprehensively as mom approached. It looked like this was going to be handled rather firmly and not by a time out either. Grizzly moms are known for a rather firm application of right front paw when they’re displeased. Instead mom did the right thing (moms usually do, right?) and carefully nuzzled her offspring’s face to show that it was perfectly ok to throw up in front of photographers. There was a chorus of awwww’s throughout the crowd and we were all happy and relieved to have witnessed what turned out to be a Disneyesque moment. There are a million stories in Yellowstone National Park and this has been one of them. There will be more as time goes on.

How this is going to work

Posted on by

Often or whenever I feel like it, whichever comes first, I’m going to post an image then give you the background about the circumstances surrounding the making of the image. I might tell you how I feel about the image or why I thought you might be interested in seeing it or even something barely connected to the image but somehow seems appropriate to mention. You just never know what is  going to happen here. It might look like every other image site, you know, kind of normal looking, then suddenly veer off in some bizarre direction and crash into a tree for no apparent reason. I gotta tell you it makes me dizzy just to think about it. So come along for the ride if you feel like it, but remember I warned you, and I’m not giving any refunds.

So here goes, the very first image posting for BigShots Now, the blog.

I thought that it would be appropriate to post a transitional image, one that has one foot in the black & white world and one foot in the world of color. My first experience with photography was with black & white and it has always held a large flat 8×10″ space in my heart. But then there is color, that glorious bright garish intense color, that we have today and how can you ignore that! I mean you just can’t so save yourself some heartache and don’t even try.

Morning Light Yellowstone River

This is a shot of Canada geese (Click on it to make it large) taken on the Yellowstone river last year during the time when there was smoke for a thousand miles. There were fires in Washington and Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Colorado and everywhere else you could think of. At times the smoke was so thick in the park that visibility was down to a couple of hundred feet. You couldn’t shoot landscapes because you couldn’t see them. Wildlife was hiding or else just appeared to be vague shadows in the haze. And everything had the dreaded gray background, not the neat gray that makes colors deepen and look richer , but the nasty concrete colored gray that just makes everything ugly. So what’s a boy to do? The solution I used was to take a sunrise shot looking into the sun as it rose over the Yellowstone and by turning a basically monochromatic image into a silvery, sepia styled picture you lose the smoke that was lying several feet off the river’s surface and you get the really cool interplay of the morning sun behind and around the geese. It brings out the luminosity in the image that is not as visible in the original colored shot. Sometimes when things don’t turn out you have to adapt. Like my dad used to say “If you find your self in hot water, take a bath”.