Tag Archives: Madison river

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.

Animal Portraits – Otters

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I was walking down memory lane this morning when I found myself along the Madison river in Yellowstone. It was way back in 2005 and I had been hoping to see some elk cross the river. Elk crossing the river is always good shooting. Bulls stopping to thrash their antlers in the water, throwing spray into the air, bellowing, cows bunching up to wait him out before they cross behind him. This was September so the rut was in full force and there was always lots of action.

But there weren’t any elk. They had moved out to greener pastures and the river was empty. I was just getting ready to pack up and find something else to shoot when I heard a high-pitched squealing coming from downstream. It was a young otter that had gotten separated from its family and was crying desperately to be found. It was racing frantically back and forth along the bank, shooting out into the river, climbing everything it could find and continually calling out for the others to come find it. This was the beginning of a very good afternoon.

Now otters in Yellowstone are not rare. But they’re one of those animals that you never see. Not unless you’re lucky. You can spend your entire time hunting for them, chasing down rumors, staking out places where they’ve been and never see one. Then you’ll talk to someone who had been picnicking at one of the picnic sites along the river and they’re all “Oh yeah we saw them. They were fishing right in front of us. One of them caught this great big trout. It was really neat. There was like four of them.  You should have been here. ” Serendipity plays a very big part in Otter spotting.

Now any place along the river is prime otter territory but there are some places more prime than others. I just happened to be unknowingly at one of them at just the right time. There is a spot on the Madison that is called the “Log Jam”. It’s just a little ways upstream past 7 mile bridge in a wide shallow bend in the river. It’s shallower there than the areas above and below and consequently a perfect place for the logs and branches floating downstream to snag and pile up forming the log jam.

This is the otter equivalent of Disneyworld. They go absolutely gonzo nuts in a place like that. First off every part of the Log Jam in an E ticket ride, they crawl up on it, they dive off of it, they wrestle and toss each other into the river. They take naps on the larger logs that are warm from the sun, hang out, talk about their day, fight, play snuggle, goof off, and generally just be otters, plus there’s food all over the place. Trout are always under and around the logs and so are the otters, because the only thing they like better than playing and sleeping is eating.

The otter family wasn’t lost. They were just upstream of the log jam and the youngster was on the downstream side. After Mom heard the little one wailing she gave a few sharp barks and soon they were all reunited again. Thus began one of the most perfect afternoons in the entire history of Yellowstone, Photography, Otter watching and sublime happiness, ever. As if deciding to give this photographer a gift they spent the next several hours swimming back and forth between that Log Jam and the confluence of the Madison and Gibbon and Firehole rivers at the eastern end of the Madison valley. Maybe a distance of 5 or 6 miles. We, the otters and I, plus about a dozen other photographers that joined in, walked back and forth along that stretch of river until I had filled every storage card I had with me with otter pictures and the otters decided it was time to go somewhere else. Without a sound they suddenly turned and swam downstream faster than we could run and they were gone. In the nearly 10 years since that afternoon that I’ve been going to Yellowstone I have never duplicated that experience again.

Fortunately I have these images to remind me of that incredible afternoon. It’s not the same but it’s pretty darn good.

Blue Buffalo Series # 3

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The camera likes blue. if you walk around at night and see people’s TV sets on, almost always the screen will appear blue. There is some technical reason for this that has to do with cathode tubes and the matrix of the phosphorus coating on the TV’s backside and the fact that the guy who invented TV was really into blue. He didn’t like any other color. A lot of the stuff that is inside TVs is now inside modern cameras. So ergo, cameras like blue too.

There was also that big censorship thing back in the 1950’s about “blue movies” being shown on TV. Since all the so-called blue movies were actually shot using blue light, hence the name, if they are projected onto a blue background they become invisible and good people wouldn’t be able to see anything the bad people were doing.  Blue on blue is just blue. So if you were watching TV back then you probably saw some of those blue movies and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until the crazy 60’s that other colors of lights were added so now you can see everything. Boy, did that make the censors nervous.

Nature is kind of into blue too. If you go outside at dusk and I highly recommend that you do, you will notice the sky gets like, really super blue just before it goes dark. After exhaustive study we have found that the warmer colors, your reds, your yellows, your ambers and Atomic Tangerines are not what they call ‘mature’ colors yet. They’re still young colors in a cosmic sense, and as such are not allowed to stay up as late as the more mature colors like your indigo’s and your blues and purples. Consequently as the day ends the warmer colors of the spectrum are sent off to bed, usually with a large amount of hollering and screaming. If you see one of those incredibly vivid sunsets where there is this phenomenal explosion of colors, all in the warmer tones, reds, oranges, scarlet etc., that’s just the kids throwing a tantrum and making a scene before they go to bed. It is best just to let them get it out of their system and then send them packing.

Up in Yellowstone it’s the same thing. They don’t get any special considerations up there just because they’re a National park. Come dusk, the younger kids are sent off to bed and the light turns blue. Here are some buffalo getting ready to call it a night. The mother is taking her two kids across the river just as the last blue light is falling, to a spot where they can bed down. The kids are balky, straggling along, they know this means bedtime and like all kids it doesn’t sit well with them because they’re not tired. Even though the kid right behind mom is so beat he may not make it across the river before he goes out.

You may not have even known anything about this whole blue light deal but now you know everything there is to know about blue light and its effect on people. So if you have trouble getting your kids to bed just turn out all the red and yellow and other warm colored lights and pretty soon the kids will be zonked. This is Blue Buffalo Series # 3.

Moonlight On The Pines

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Madison River Valley Yellowstone          click to enlarge

Driving back from a day’s shoot I always looked forward to entering the east end of the Madison river valley for the final 14 miles back to West Yellowstone where hopefully one of the towns restaurants would still be open so I could get dinner before I got to my room and the nights work of transferring images to safe storage and prepping for the next days shoot.

There is something about the Madison that is addictive. It’s the first place I head for when I arrive in the park and the last I travel through on my way back home when the trip has ended. There is always something happening along the banks of this slow flowing river. The buffalo and elk herds gather here to have their calves in the spring. Canada geese hatch their young and take refuge on it when a wandering coyote nears, hoping to catch a gosling or two. Wolves patrol the far bank en route from one wolfish activity to another. In the fall bull elk do battle along the river and sometimes in it for the right to collect cows for their harem and sometimes I think just for the sheer enjoyment of it. Otters will travel down the river, swimming, playing, occasionally catching trout nearly as long as they are. All of these things and more happen in other parts of the park too but somehow they’re more special when they’re observed here.

Besides the wildlife there is just the sheer overwhelming beauty of the place. Driving into the valley at first light when the fog drifts across the road and shadowy elk and buffalo slowly take form as you pass by. The suns rays slicing through the mist that blankets the river and lighting up the boulders above 7 mile bridge. Watching the elk herds stir to life as the day begins, the new calves frolicking in the wet grass, you think that the very best time to be here is the break of day.

But then you are headed home after a long day working all the other incredible places in the park and you’re tired and hungry and want to get back and take your shoes off and drink a nice hot cup of tea. You need to decompress from everything you’ve seen and done and one of the best ways to do that is to slowly make the drive back along the Madison and watch as the skies slowly darken and the colors change from bright blue to indigo, and the sunset displays in every color of the spectrum until night falls. And you think this is the very best time to be here.

The image above, a study of blues, always reminds me of Emmy Lou Harris’s song “Easy From Now On” which had the phrase “A Quarter Moon in A Ten Cent Town” from her album of the same name, not so much because of the words but more the sound of it. The way the haunting melody shapes the music of her words adds their richness to the vision and totally completes this image. Then I’m sure this is the best time to be here.

Deep Thoughts

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DeepThoughts6867Canada Goose and goslings Yellowstone                       click to enlarge

Here it is, the day I’ve been dreading. Mom says today we go into the river. Boy it looks cold. Dad says if we don’t go in a coyote will eat us, but he’s always saying stuff like that. I haven’t even seen a coyote. We saw a small foot once just laying in the grass and Mom and Dad got all weird and sent us into the high grass while they ran around flapping their wings and making lots of noise but I didn’t think it was a coyote.

I told them I didn’t think I was going in. I thought I would just wait awhile until I was a little bigger. Dad says I’m going in come hell or high water whatever that means. How you gonna be a goose if you don’t go in the water, he asked, but I’m rethinking this whole goose thing if that what is it takes to be one. Mom says there’s nothing to it you just fall in bob around a little, make your feet go back and forth like you’re walking and that’s it. You’re a goose. I’m not so sure, I’ve seen them swimming and they can swim really fast. How am I gonna keep up. Did you see the size of their feet. They’re like humongous. I’ve only got little feet, no way I can stay with them. What if I get swept down the river, how’re they gonna find me. I’ll get eaten by a coyote for sure then. This is turning out to be a really stupid idea. I’m not going.

Whoa…Dad just picked up sis with his beak and totally flung her in the river. Holy man, she’s bobbing though and there she goes swimming right behind Mom. Ok, OK dad I’m going, really, I just want to ease in sorta, don’t push. Alright then, this isn’t so bad. I don’t know what sis was so scared about, this is a piece of cake. Ha! I got goose written all over me.

We Are Family

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Here they are the starlets of the river world, or perhaps I should say the otterlets of the river world. These are the showstoppers, rivaling wolves, grizzlies, combative bulls, any attraction you want to put up against them. I hesitate to say this only because I don’t want to tarnish the good name of otters but they’re the Kardashians of the river ways. Beautiful, arrogant, aware of every lens pointed at them, they’re Yellowstone’s answer to Hollywood’s glamour.

When the Otters appear everything else stops. They command your attention from the moment of their arrival to when the last gleaming flash of their glistening bodies disappear down stream. They are probably one of the most photogenic animals you can see in the park and one of the most elusive. I have been to Yellowstone more times than I can remember and I have only been fortunate enough to encounter them for an extended period, three times over a dozen years. It’s not that they’re rare, because they’re certainly not, they’re just one of those animals that you have to luck onto. Some people walk into the park, trip over an otter and say “Oh look at that” and head for the shops at Old Faithful. Others have never seen them in all their visits.

On this particular shoot I was following along the Madison river when I noticed a photographer friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years standing near the river looking upstream. I stopped and talked to him and he told me that otters had been seen at 7 mile bridge and he thought they might show up again. No sooner had he said that when we heard their cries upriver as they talked to each other and traveled downstream towards us. I was lucky enough to have the correct lens on my camera as they came into view, playing, chasing each other, diving for fish, cavorting like kids just out of school. Above 7 mile bridge is an area we call the log jam for obvious reasons and if there are any otters around that’s where you’ll find them. That’s where this shot was taken and several hundred more in fact as they spent the better part of an hour swimming through the snags, climbing over them, resting, and generally showing us what otters do for a living.

When I stopped to talk to my friend I had only intended to be there a few moments so I had neglected to turn off my truck. However when you encounter an opportunity to spend quality time with the Kardashians, I mean otters you can not lose focus for a second. These are pictures that you’ll never be able to get again so it’s now or never. The cardinal rule for wildlife photographers is “Shoot it when you see it”, and that’s what we did. As the otters moved downstream we followed, shooting as we went until we had traveled a good mile or more from the initial meeting. When I had time to think I wondered if I would have a truck, not to mention all the rest of my gear when I got back, but in for a penny in for a pound.

Finally the otters had had enough of us and decided to ditch these otterarazzi’s and so they did, leaving us to trudge back to our starting point, two grown men giddy as school girls over the incredible experience we’d just had, carrying our gear, me wondering how I was going to explain to the insurance company that someone had stolen my truck with all my gear in it just because I left it unlocked and running, and it wasn’t my fault because there were these otters, see…. and my friend making comments like “Why didn’t you shut it off when you got out?” and “I always shut mine off”, etc. until I had visions of making him otter bait but I shouldn’t have worried, this was Yellowstone.

When we got back there it was just like I left it, still running but nearly out of gas, everything in place, and thanking the powers that be for not punishing me for the ecological catastrophe I had caused by allowing all the those hydrocarbons to escape, I stowed my gear. I did shut off my truck then because I needed a moment to settle down and reflect on what had just happened. I had just spent over two hours doing what I love most in the world and I had three, count ’em three, compact flash cards filled with otter pictures. My truck didn’t get stolen, my gear was safe, the EPA didn’t have a warrant working for my arrest, it had been a glorious day. To this day that experience remains at the very top of my Yellowstone memories. It is one of those times that can never be recreated.

Even though I have shot otters since then it was never the same, the time was too short, the light was wrong, they were too far off, there was always something to mar the opportunity, but not that day. That day was perfect.

One Headed Buffalo Calf

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You know when you’re waiting in line at the supermarket because that lady that just walked jumped in front of you has sent the checkout person back to exchange a cucumber that had a spot on it for another one. You know who I mean, she’s the same one who orders spaghetti at McDonald’s and then argues with the counter guy because it’s not available. Well when this happens and it always does, it gives you time to read those magazines at the end of the counter, the ones with stories like “My Grandmother Had Bigfoot’s Baby!” and “Aliens Ate my Poodle!” stuff like that. Well I like those. It gives you a chance to see what the normal folks are up to while you’re out in the boonies taking pictures.

So there, right on the front cover was the story “One Headed Buffalo Calf Born in Yellowstone!” I was GobSmacked I got to tell you. I had recently been up to Yellowstone and hadn’t heard a word about it. You’d a thunk they would have had roadblocks set up so everybody coming and going would know what was going on. Nope, not a word.

I was so excited by this phenomenon that I dropped my gallon jug of Ensure and dashed out to Yellowstone. I didn’t even stop to water my Coleman’s coralroot, a stunning purple orchid that exists in only a few mountain ranges in the Southwest. Fewer than 200 are known to exist in the wild and I had just nudged mine into blooming. I didn’t care. All I could think of was to get up to Yellowstone and document this miracle before some else did.

I barely came to a rolling stop at the park’s entrance to flash my lifetime Geezer Pass and current Driver’s License while yelling “Where is It ? Where’s the one headed Buffalo calf?” The attendant crisp and sharp in her freshly pressed Ranger suit barely looked up as she said “Try along the Madison.”

I was baffled. Here we have one of the biological miracles of the century and you would have thought I had asked her where I might see some Japanese tourists with cameras. I looked her right in the eye and said “There’s a one headed Buffalo calf in the park and I’m going to find it.” She didn’t seem alarmed as she looked directly at me but I noticed she pushed that red button thing they have in their booths that take your picture.

But I had my first clue, the Madison river, that’s where all the buffalo hang out to have their calves. Clever, hiding it plain sight that way. I drove slowly along watching the various groups of buffalo and then suddenly there it was. She was standing alone as if shunned by the rest of the herd. A young buffalo cow and her newly born ! – One Headed Buffalo Calf- ! I nearly passed out with excitement. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t do a simple thing like set my tripod up, I was only able to extend two of the legs and the stupid clamp wouldn’t work and I finally just threw it down on the ground and kicked it under the truck. I handheld the camera and that is why the first three hundred of my shots were blurry but eventually I was able to get a hold of myself and start acting like the professional I am.

I got those pictures that day. You can see one above in fact. There he is, a one headed buffalo calf born in the wild to a registered full-blooded buffalo mother and I have the picture. There were other photographers there that day and some were taking pictures, but they missed the story of their lives. They looked right past this little guy as if something like this happened every day. Not me though, I got the shot and right now I’m shopping it around to the tabloids. Murdoch hasn’t returned my call yet but that’s probably because some aide is asleep at the switch. Boy is he fired when the boss sees this shot in Nat Geo and he could have had it for a song. My answering machine is blinking, that’s probably Getty wanting exclusive rights, but I don’t know, I’m holding out for the big bucks. Wish me luck.