Month: January 2016

This white-faced capuchin doesn’t appear too welcoming on my first day on the Osa Peninsula.  His threatening grimaces eventually turned to disinterest and he continued on his way.

The geysers in the large cluster of geysers within the Fountain Paint Pot area of Yellowstone erupt periodically at unpredictable times and  at unpredictable heights.  These shots are of Spasm Geyser which was putting on quite a show.  Bob, Javier, Eric, and Moose are intent on capturing the eruption at its peak moment.  I was more interested in capturing them capturing the geyser.

A sign reading:  Unstable Ground – Boiling Water – Stay on designated trails -Slippery when wet or icy greeted us at the entrance to the Fountain Paint Pot area in Yellowstone.  The unstable ground, boiling water, and toxic minerals has had an effect on the trees in the area.

I expected to see as many elk as I saw bison in Yellowstone but in the areas of Yellowstone we visited, we saw elk only twice.  In the late afternoon on our final day in the park we spotted a male.  Another elk was further up the hill, possibly his mate, but I never saw its head.  The elk was in dappled shade so correct exposure was difficult.  In most of my shots, he was head down, feeding on the grasses beneath the powdery snow but he finally looked up and around so I was able to get a decent shot of his face.  If only he’d walked on top of a rock outcropping so his legs were completely visible, not chopped off as he sunk into the snow.

While in Yellowstone, I watched this bison cow and calf  having what appeared to be a sweet mother/child encounter with the cow nuzzling the calf.  Then, it appears the calf did something to displease mom because she butted him and he moved away kicking up snow as he went.

 

On my first morning in Costa Rica a year ago in January 2015, while I waited for the other photographers to arrive in San José where we were gathering to fly to the Osa Peninsula, I wandered around the grounds of the hotel and discovered a beautiful tree with intriguing clusters of flowers. In Costa Rica, the tree is called “el poró blanco.” Its Latin name is Erythrina Fusca. I can’t find a translation for “poró” so I’m in the dark about what its common name means.  I will return to Costa Rica this week but I won’t be able to photograph this lovely flowering tree again because I will arrive in San José after dark and will leave again the next morning before daylight.

I just read that astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of the solar system far beyond the orbit of the former 9th planet, Pluto.  They have dubbed the icy planet “Planet Nine.”   The Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park has such an icy, otherworldly look that I imagine this could be what Planet Nine looks like.

I’m practicing using my Better Beamer with my speed light and Big Bertha in preparation for Costa Rica.  I’ll need the Better Beamer so that I can “beam better” into the rainforest adding light to capture some of those exotic feathered creatures that remain so elusive by hiding deep in the darkness.  This male Anna’s hummer wasn’t hiding deep in the darkness but it was getting darker when I zeroed in on him at the feeder.

This is the same coyote that I photographed in Yellowstone last week and posted in my blog.  I liked this shot even better because the coyote is looking directly at me.  On Tuesday evening of this week, I entered the original version of this shot in my camera club’s January photo critique.  It was well received but I lost a point because I didn’t crop the shot to eliminate some of the snow that the judge deemed unnecessary.  After the judge requested that my photo be cropped on screen, it was obvious why he asked.  In the cropped version, even though just a little snow at the bottom was removed, that small change made a huge difference.  When I took the first shot I posted last week, the coyote was closer to me and cropping wasn’t needed.   This is the cropped version of the shot I presented to my camera club.

As a tribute to Glenn Frey, I am posting a couple of my eagle shots from Alaska in December 2015.

This flock of wild turkeys was trotting through the parking lot at the eye doctor’s office Monday morning after my appointment.  I had trouble seeing to focus the camera because my eyes were dilated and I learned that I had scratched my right cornea on my last night in Yellowstone so the vision in my right eye is a bit blurry.  I was lucky to get any shots at all with my limited eyesight and it wasn’t until I downloaded the mostly blurry batch of photos that I realized the car in the background is a Lincoln MKZ.  I’m so glad I held out for the bronze fire color.  This car looks drab by comparison.  And, as I write, I am without my new car and driving a rental Toyota Corolla which means I’ve come down a notch or two in luxury.  Boy did I get spoiled fast.  My MKZ is getting its protective coating.

 

“Robert” is  the codeword used by Yellowstone Park guides for the bobcat that frequents a site on the Madison River near the west entrance to the park.  We were lucky enough to photograph Robert on our first day and on our fourth day in the park.  These shots are from our second encounter when the bobcat exhibited behaviors that we witness in our domesticated felines every day.  We had about twenty minutes with the cat before it climbed the hill and disappeared.

 

 

I wrote this post while cooling my heels at the Denver airport, on my way home  from a week in Yellowstone with Moose Peterson and 4 others photographing critters and landscapes in the snow. At dinner Friday, the group’s last evening together, I ordered chocolate mousse for dessert. The mousse was served with a moose shaped cookie.   When I took out my iPhone to snap a photo, Moose, who was sitting across from me, grabbed the mousse and posed for me.  We didn’t see any moose of the four-legged variety in Yellowstone but with a two-legged Moose, a cookie moose and a chocolate Mousse, I had instant Triple Moose. Moose (the two-legged one) had the crème brûlée.

Moose saved the best for last.  On Friday,  we visited the Norris Geyser Basin.   It is impossible to describe the haunting beauty that the gorgeous snow covered views deep within our first national park offer in winter.  The  steamy chemical stew from the geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots blankets the trees surrounding these features with snowy shrouds and creates a look like no other place on earth.  The effect is otherworldly.

Wednesday was a challenging day.  The critters were few and far between.  When we did find a coyote hunting on a snow covered meadow, the sun reflecting off the snow produced heat waves that prevented good focus on our subject.  Photographing the herd of bison feeding near the Firehole River in the mist was cut short because another herd of bison was coming toward us in the middle of the roadway at a fast clip.  Personal safety, not to mention park rules that prevent anyone from being closer to park wildlife than 100 yards if outside a vehicle, dictated our  hasty retreat.  We disconnected our long lenses from the tripods, moved the tripods behind the vehicle, and climbed inside with our cameras and lenses.  When the bison passed by us leaving a safe distance, we returned to our mission, only to be thwarted a second time by another herd.  We beat another hasty retreat.  No sooner had we exited the vehicle after the second group passed, a third herd of bison caused us to give up altogether at that site.   Later, after lunch when the winds picked up enough to blow the snow off the trees, we opted to forgo a chilly walk Grand Prismatic Spring and went instead to Biscuit Basin.  There, the otherworldly landscape was hauntingly beautiful but we were prevented from completing the entire loop because yet another herd of bison was feeding close by.  Here are a few shots from Biscuit Basin.

The traffic jams in Yellowstone National Park are a bit different from the  traffic jams I’m familiar with on California’s crowded freeways.  This small herd of bison decided to stand (and lie) in the middle of the roadway.  We were headed toward Fishing Bridge to eat our lunch in the warming hut at the ranger station there but were delayed a while because of the bison.  The Bombardier that was transporting us (a vehicle equipped with front skis and rear treads) has portholes on top that allowed us to poke up through the holes and photograph the bison without endangering ourselves.  I took a photograph of my friend Richard poking through the front porthole as he photographed one of the bison at the side of the road.  I changed to my 300mm lens to get the shot of the bison sticking out its tongue at us as if to say, “Nyaa, nyaa, we were here first.”  Joe,  our guide, eventually wove the vehicle through and around the herd.

 

 

 

Monday was our first day shooting in Yellowstone National Park.  We left our hotel in West Yellowstone at 7AM and returned at 6:15 PM.  What a day!   We had no sooner entered the park than we passed a lone coyote trotting along the snow covered road.  We pulled over and waited for it so trot past.  The coyote cooperated and we got some great shots as it trotted by.  We drove by it three times and pulled over each time waiting for it to approach.   As Moose instructed us, we crouched down right next to our vehicle making us appear to be part of it and sure enough, the coyote trotted past us each time, barely looking at us.  Finally after about an hour of this, the coyote exited the road in search of a vole or some other small creature in a large snow covered meadow and we drove on to experience the other wonders of Yellowstone National Park.  I took this shot with my Nikon Df and 300mm lens.  It is  not cropped.

 

 

I practiced setting up my tripod, attaching the 600mm lens, then the camera all with two pairs of gloves on.  I couldn’t manage to do with the outer pair on as well, but I’m thinking that even with sub-zero temperatures in Yellowstone, my hands should stay warm enough with two pairs of gloves for the few minutes it takes to set up. I was inside the house and the lens was pointed at the hummingbird feeder so when a hummer stopped by to sip the nectar, I took advantage of the opportunity for more focus practice.  I was in Auto Area AF when the hummer arrived and for the first few shots.  But, since the camera was not moving I didn’t need it and I remembered (yay!) how to change the settings while looking through the viewfinder.  The shutter speed was very slow 1/15 so I was lucky that the hummer kept his head still while the rest of his body twirled around.  I still need to work on composition so I cropped this shot to a vertical 8X10.

 

The behavior of companion parrots is sometimes quite odd.  When I turned on the food processor to grind up some almonds for a batch of Parrot Pot Pies I was making for Bobo, the motor noise caused her to retreat to her cage and sit on top of her water dish, head feathers raised and wings outstretched as if she were getting a spray bath.  The sound of the vacuum also causes her to react this way sometimes.  Since it looked as if she wanted a bath, I took a break from baking to spritz her a little.  Almost too late,  I decided to set up the tripod and take a few shots of her bathing.  Of course she had already shaken off most of the water drops and returned to her cage by the time I got the camera and remote trigger ready.  But, she loves her spray baths so much that after a few more spritzes in her direction, I managed to lure  her back out, down the ladder, and onto the counter top by the sink.  When she raises the feathers on her head to allow the spray to penetrate she always reminds me of a triceratops.  It’s obvious to me that birds are descendants of dinosaurs.