Coyote    Escalante                                                    click to enlarge

Every once in a while we try something new here at the blog and this is one of those times. From time to time I’m going to feature one of my animal portraits that will be included in a new forth coming eBook named, coincidentally enough, Animal Portraits. I’ll give you some background about the animal and how the shot was made without getting too technical thereby causing you to roll your head back uncontrollably as you pass out from boredom. Many a knot on the head and/or a chipped tooth has happened because of boredom. I promise to be careful.

Each portrait will show not just what the animal looks like, documentary style like the picture of the bull elk standing 3/4 bugling that you’ve seen 100 times, but more what the animal is ‘like’. It’s character, its personality, where it lives, what it does, who it  likes to hang out with, what it likes to eat, everything that shows what makes that animal unique. Sometimes it will just be a study letting you put the story to the picture.

This portrait is of a coyote that happened to be frequenting the roadside in an area of Arizona known as The Neck. The Neck is a very cool stretch of highway in the Escalante area of Arizona with steep drop offs on either side and a view that goes on forever. Many people use it for its primary function of getting you from here to there and I did too, but I paid special attention to my surroundings in the hope that there would be that more than special image happening. After all it isn’t often that you can drive a narrow highway high in the sky and look down a thousand feet on either side of the road. Slow is good here because while beautiful it is terribly unforgiving of any error.

What animals lack in human speech they more than make up for in expression, body language and emotion. It is hard to tell exactly what this guy is thinking but you know he’s thinking something. He had obviously been given handouts by travelers as he was cautious and expectant but not afraid when I stopped to ask him directions. It was also clear that he expected some sort of payment and when I didn’t provide it he began considering me in a different light.

That is what made his portrait important for me and why I am considering adding it the book. Not that he was just considering this cheapskate that had stopped for reasons unknown, after all, if he didn’t want to feed me, or shoot me, what the hell did he want, but that he was interested and curious enough to put some thought into it. Not to get too Disney about this but look at that face. There’s something going on in there. Maybe this picture works for me because he’s made me curious about him too.