The weather changed as we sat on the outdoor deck near the restaurant at The View watching the sunset in Monument Valley on our last evening. The color in the sky disappeared quickly, the clouds piled up, and thunderheads rolled in so I shot this scene in black and white to give emphasis to the impending storm.
On our last evening in Monument Valley, we had quite the light show! When the pouring rains came, I had to run out to the balcony to save my camera from getting drenched before the light show was over but I did manage to capture this cloud to cloud strike.
Yesterday morning’s sunrise here in Monument Valley was the most spectacular we’ve had this week. Gorgeous clouds moved in and it even sprinkled while I was shooting this scene.
Although I try not to anthropomorphize animal behavior, I do have a tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects like rocks. I see faces and other man-made and artificial features in stone and since I’m currently visiting Monument Valley and environs, that tendency is now front and center. I have just discovered that this tendency of mine stems from something called pareidolia which is the human brain’s instinct to spot familiar shapes in random patterns. Yesterday, we visited the Valley of the Gods near Mexican Hat, Utah, a rugged but scenic sandstone valley with towering red mesas, buttes, and pinnacles that is considered by some to be a miniature Monument Valley. One of the rock formations that jumped out at me looked like the corner of an ancient Greek or Roman building constructed using the Corinthian architectural order, which columns are ornate and decorated with acanthus leaves. This mesa in the Valley of the Gods has a square corner that looked to me like a column with a capital decorated with carved acanthus leaves and small corner scrolls. When I blurted that out to my photographer friends, no one could see it but me. I stand by my illusion.
Three iconic buttes of Monument Valley are West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte, and Merrick Butte, seen above, left to right, with Mitchell Mesa behind West Mitten Butte. I wake up every morning to a view of those three buttes, but not this view. It is amazing to see how the look of each mesa and butte changes as you drive the loop. We drove to Ford’s Point lookout which is one of the iconic movie locations that John Ford used to film a number of John Wayne movies. This is the view that John Wayne must have had of these buttes.
Sunrise at Monument Valley is always spectacular and yesterday morning was not exception. The marvelous thing about shooting sunrise here is that we’re able to shoot from our third floor balconies at The View inside the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. In my “view” it’s the only hotel with “view” in its name that actually lives up to the hype. This is East Mitten seconds before the sun poked above the horizon.
On my last evening in Montana, we visited the Ravalli County Airport where helicopters fighting the Moose Creek Fire were returning at day’s end. This Skycrane heavy-lift helicopter, which sucks up massive amounts of water from lakes and drops it on wildfires, came in while we were there. I looked up the tail number, which is closer to the nose on this aircraft, and discovered that it is more than 50 years old. Glad it’s still serving.
Sundown at Rattlesnake Butte a couple of weeks ago in Montana.
I couldn’t help fawning over Bambi when I was in Montana visiting Moose and Sharon. In fact, there were three Bambis, a set of twins and a singleton.
What fascinates me about woodpeckers is how they use their tails to support themselves. Those tail feathers are very strong and stiff to help hold their weight against a tree trunk while they pound hard with their heavy beaks. According to the American Bird Conservancy, woodpeckers’ tails act as a third leg along with their feet (two toes forward, two toes backward), sort of a tripod support that helps with shock absorption and braces them when they hammer trees with their beaks. This is a Hairy Woodpecker, using its tail to brace against the Ponderosa Pine on Moose’s ranch last week.
Montana wasn’t all smoky sunrises and silky waterfalls. We did come across a small flock of young Cedar Waxwings along the river’s edge. They were flying after hatching nymphs on the surface of the water where rafts of algae and water plants floated. These two were closely watching the water’s surface and did not seem too worried about our approach to photograph them.
A 90 second exposure calmed the rumbling Great Falls at Ryan Dam in Montana, smoothing them into a silky flow.
The week I spent in Great Falls, Montana created some of the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets I’ve ever seen. We were at Ryan Dam photographing the falls and I looked behind me just after 6 AM to see godbeams streaking out from behind a hilltop as the sun was beginning to rise. Wow.
More than one hundred years ago, these windows on the powerhouse at Ryan Dam first looked over the largest falls in Great Falls, Montana. Today, the powerhouse is still in use but, as in many old buildings, many of the windows panes are missing.
Another smoky sunrise in Montana.
Wildfires are raging throughout the west and the skies have been filled with smoke most days in Montana in the past ten days. After dinner on my last evening in Montana, Moose took me to the airport in Hamilton where the helicopters that are working the fires come in to refuel. In this image, the Price Valley Heli-repellers from Idaho, head back to Missoula after stopping briefly to refuel their helicopter. They will refuel themselves as well, before returning to the front. This is one of the few times I’ve photographed flying aircraft and this was a particular challenge because I was hand holding my Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z180-600 at a shutter speed of 1/25 of a second so that the rotors would blur. Making sure the rest of the image didn’t blur was the challenge.
The sun hides behind the clouds as it dips in the sky in Great Falls, Montana. The intense red is created in part by the smoke in the air from the wildfires burning in Montana, Washington, and Oregon.
After misidentifying a Pine Siskin in my post two days ago (I posted a photo of a female House Finch and called it a Pine Siskin) I edited the title to say Pseudo Pine Siskin and edited the post to correct my error. This is a photo of three real Pine Siskins in a Tamarack Tree, not exactly a pine tree but related.
Such an idyllic moment. Yesterday morning, the White-tailed doe visited Moose’s ranch with her twins and her brother, a young buck. I was already on the deck watching them and Moose tossed an apple to the doe and the buck. One of the fawns reached up to get a sample from Mom.
I’m spending a few days with my friends Moose and Sharon in Montana. Yesterday morning, I relished the peaceful sanctity of their ranch, as I sat on the deck, savoring a cup of strong coffee, enjoying the bird songs, and watching the birds. This pseudo Pine Siskin (it’s actually a House Finch) made it obvious why they got their name.