Month: January 2018

Identification of wolves and their packs is difficult in Yellowstone, even for experts.  We thought that the pack we observed at Bijah Spring was the 8 Mile Pack because the kill was at the most southerly end of the pack’s known territory but the NPS identified the pack as the Wapiti Lake Pack.  This kill was documented by many photographers besides us and a video made in the hours before we arrived at the spot was posted on Instagram by the National Park Service.

The Yellowstone Forever Wolf Fund sells a guide to the park’s wolves that includes the known number of wolves in each pack, the territory each pack roams, which wolves have radio collars, and males, females, and alpha wolves and their colors.  Identification of the Alpha Male in either pack is not definitive but the chart indicates that both packs’ Alpha Males might be uncollared black wolves.  While we watched the wolves napping in the afternoon sun, one large black, uncollared male got up and headed toward the kill.  As the other wolves stirred and one by one began to make their way down the hillside toward the bison, the black male alone went to the kill and began to feed.  All of the other wolves stayed well away from him while he fed.  He fed alone for about ten minutes before the others slowly crept into the kill area, still giving deference to the black male.  Here he approaches the kill site stealthily working his way through the mists from the hot spring.

 

The toxic mists spewing from the geothermal pools at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone created lots of mysterious scenes.  This lone pine tree emerged from the misty shroud briefly, then was again completely obscured as the breezes moved the mists back and forth across our path.

It was such a privilege to observe wolves at play in Yellowstone.  They were not concerned about their next meal because they were sated and their latest bison kill was just a few yards from where they frolicked in the snow.  They really are just big wild dogs and they exuded such joy that it was almost hard to believe that they had, only hours before, attacked and killed a huge bison.

 

There is something otherworldly about the geyser basins at Yellowstone National Park.  The dead trees, killed by drinking up silica from Yellowstone’s chemical soup and destined to become petrified, are stark reminders of the unfriendly environment. When we walked in the Biscuit Basin area, I was once again struck but its haunting beauty.

 

It’s called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, carved by the Yellowstone River that runs through the canyon.  In the winter,  its reddish walls are obscured by snow and bear no  resemblance to the colorful Grand Canyon of Arizona.  It is still a striking image.

We’re in Yellowstone National Park in winter.   Much of the park is closed to tourists because it is inaccessible to vehicle traffic.  The only way to enter most of the open areas of Yellowstone is through the West Yellowstone entrance and only with guided vehicles.  The snow is deep here and we’ve had more snow the past couple of days so the park is blanketed in white.  It is cold enough in most of the park for the snow to cling in great blobs to the branches of pine trees and it is truly a winter wonderland here.  But, because the area is a geothermal area, some areas of the park do not accumulate snow because of the heat they generate.  We wandered through the Midway Geyser Basin on our second day.  It was incredibly cold but my hands thawed as we walked on the snow covered boardwalks that traverse the geothermal areas.  At the surface, the pools of acidic and super-hot water house living mats of green, orange and pink microorganisms.  Your imagination can run wild with the shapes that appear in muck.

It was another eventful day in Yellowstone.  We didn’t have the excitement of watching a pack of wolves up close for more than 90 minutes but for me, it was exciting and yet another milestone in my progress toward overcoming my fear of heights.

We were at Firehole Falls on the Firehole River taking images of the falls and blurring the water crashing down the falls with various methods, including a 6 stop neutral density filter, multiple exposure, and the easiest, a very slow shutter speed and small aperture.  There were three different sites from which to photograph the falls and while I waited my turn for the others to finish at one viewpoint that had limited access, Moose took me to the last spot with views of what he called “scrubbing bubbles.”  The road is close to the edge of the precipice and the snow was piled a few feet high up to the edge of the cliff.  I couldn’t tell where the ground ended.  At one spot, a large opening at the edge with footprints in the snow in front of it made it appear that someone had fallen through the snow and over the side.  I said as much and Moose, completely fearless, walked up to the opening and peered over.  “Nope,” he said.  I wondered if it might be the preferred spot for the photograph I wanted to get.  He took my tripod and planted it right next to the opening, extended his hand to me to help me to the spot.  Of course, when I stepped off the packed snow at the road’s edge, my boot sank a foot or so, knocking me off balance and I fell backwards and found myself sitting on the snow.  Vinnie helped me up and Moose made sure I didn’t knock him, my camera, and myself over the edge.  Then he walked away and left me there.  The drop was probably 100 feet and yet I had no fear.  Perhaps at last I am beginning to overcome my irrational fear of heights.

Moose asked for my cell phone and created this pano of me to prove that I actually managed to stand at the edge of this precipice and take photographs without fear.  Thank you, Moose.  The other photograph is the part of the falls I photographed from that vantage point, blurred using my 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, ISO 50, f/Stop 45, Shutter Speed 1/1.6 second, focal length 260mm.  The image, while monochromatic, is not black and white.  The water is actually a greenish color.

Photograph by Moose Peterson

Photograph by a fearless Carol Smith

As we drove out of  Yellowstone National Park Tuesday evening, we saw our first wolf, a loner that crossed a meadow and disappeared into the trees.  Our appetites were whetted.  Sightings of Canis lupus, the Gray Wolf. This was our hoped for goal, to see wolves in the park.  But, wolves are elusive so Wednesday morning had us visiting Gibbons Falls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for landscape photographs of waterfalls.

At our first stop, Moose heard word of a bison kill by wolves earlier that morning and confirmed it while we were at the Grand Canyon when a snowmobiler shared some iPhone photos he’d taken earlier that morning while the wolves fed on their kill.  The incredible thing is that the kill was only yards off the road in a large open area near Nymph Lake and Roaring Mountain.  The Eight-mile Wolf Pack claims that area as its territory.

The kill area was a bit of a drive from our morning destination so we ate our lunches in the vehicle and drove to the site.  There, in the snow not even 100 feet off the road, lay the remains of a bison carcass swarming with ravens.  A hundred yards or so away, approaching the edge of the tree line beyond the kill, nine members of the Eight-mile Wolf Pack lay sprawled, bellies full and napping in the afternoon sun.

Two Bald Eagles and a single Golden Eagle soared overhead, their crops also full of bison.  A pool to the left of the carcass spewed sulfur scented mists that wafted intermittently over the carcass obscuring the view and threatening our camera equipment.  We thought the wolves were sated and would return to the seclusion of the forest following their naps so we contented ourselves with photographs of the pack in repose with an occasional wolf head popping above a snow drift only to flop down again and disappear from view.  A couple of them disappeared into the thicket of trees in the distance.

After about 40 minutes, the black wolf, the one that is believed to be the alpha male, arose from his nap and slowly approached the carcass.  We and our cameras were ready.  And, one by one, all the wolves began to approach the carcass, at first letting the alpha male feed without disruption.  To our delight, several of the wolves played in the snow and one pair loped playfully near the sulfuric mists waiting their turns to feed.  We were on the roadway and we were not disturbing the wolves and the wolves seemed to take little notice of us after their initial perusal of us and our cameras as they approached the carcass.

What we witnessed was a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Although it happens throughout the park on a daily basis, few humans ever witness what we had the privilege to watch for almost 90 minutes.  Even Moose, who has visited Yellowstone National Park for more than thirty years, even working on wolf conservation projects, had never seen anything like what we saw, let alone photograph such a phenomenal event.

There is more of the Eight-mile Wolf Pack to come to In Focus Daily.

 

 

I’ve struggled a bit since I’ve been in Yellowstone with equipment issues, all caused by operator error.  None of the issues is major and they are easily correctable and were all preventable.

At the end of our first stop on our first morning in Yellowstone, I broke my new di-GPS attachment.  It is a simple gadget and I read the instructions carefully, including the one I neglected to follow: remove the di-GPS before replacing the camera in the camera bag as it is fragile and might break if it is forced for any reason.  As I was ignoring this important instruction, it caught on the edge of the camera bag and cracked a piece out of the plastic collar.  By 8:36AM of the first morning, I no longer had a functioning GPS tracker.  I thought it was broken but at the end of the day, Moose asked to take a look at it and discovered it still worked, even with the cracked collar.

Day 2 started with a drive into Yellowstone National Park on Highway 191 along the Madison River.  We pulled over to photograph the morning sunrise and walked through deep snow down to the river’s edge.  Once again I had attached the Di-GPS to the D5 and began to take photographs looking down the Madison River toward the colorful clouds and rising sun.  My photographs were alarmingly dark and I had to add +1.7 exposure compensation to get anything other than a silhouette.  I was standing next to Moose and he heard me grumbling and asked to see my camera.  Despite his efforts in the less than ideal conditions (-1° morning temperatures and heavily gloved hands although he did remove his for a few minutes to inspect my camera) he couldn’t find what was wrong and handed the camera back to me.  Eric was standing behind me and said, “Carol, did you drop something?”  I looked down and a small loop of black thread lay on top of the snow.  We were up to our knees in soft snow.  I reached down and pulled my di-GPS unit, slightly smaller than my Fitbit Zip, out of the snow.  Thank you, Eric.  If he hadn’t been standing there, I wouldn’t have noticed its absence until we’d returned to the vehicle.  So, by 7:55AM on the second day, the GPS was again out of commission.

When we returned to the vehicle to continue our meander through Yellowstone, Moose again looked at my camera in slightly more ideal conditions.  He discovered that I had somehow changed the white balance settings within the Cloudy preset so that there was a pronounced dark blue cast to it.  And, I had managed to make those changes the day before when on the first morning, fingers heavily gloved and awkwardly groping at buttons and dials, I hadn’t realized that I was changing settings with adverse exposure consequences as a result.  So, I’m not sure what I’ll do about the GPS unit.  Buy a new one and be more careful with it, I suspect. As for the problem with inadvertent changes to settings, I need to be more careful with my bulky gloves when I’m making changes to settings.

Each day when we return to our rooms we lay out our gear under towels to acclimate to warmer temperatures in the rooms and to avoid moisture condensation onto the gear.  When we return from dinner, we clean all our gear and return it to our camera bags.  We do this because of the harsh conditions that our equipment is exposed to as we walk near the geysers as they are spewing steam that is highly alkaline and acidic and very toxic to camera gear.  In addition, after the settings fiasco of the early part of the day, I have added something to my nightly routine.  I will make sure I return all the settings to my personal default settings.

After the morning I had, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Eric photobombed my sunrise photograph.

 

It’s a bit chilly here in Yellowstone.  It was about 9 degrees when our coach entered Yellowstone National Park shortly after 7AM Monday morning.  It was reported that Sunday’s low was -18°.  Glad it warmed up Monday from Sunday’s low but it’s looking like the coming week will turn colder again.  Brrrr.   Even the bison looked chilled.

This bison bull we encountered late morning barely moved as we photographed him from the side of the road.  I used a slow shutter speed to show the snow streaking past his thick, dark, coat.  We had taken most of our photographs and probably would have stayed longer but a large group of photographers, about 12 or so, arrived.  At first they were down the road a bit but they decided our vantage point was better and they crowded around us and even edged between Moose’s and Eric’s tripods when they stepped away to retrieve something from our vehicle. Their tripod legs were crossed, an indication that there really wasn’t any room between them.   I pointed out the obvious to the interloper, that two photographers were already there, but he shrugged and argued that there was room for him.  We left shortly after.

On the first morning of our first day in Yellowstone in January 2016, we came across a lone coyote ambling along the road.  We drove well past him and got out of the vehicle, crouching as a group next to the front of the vehicle as the coyote continued undeterred and apparently unconcerned about the large dark lump by the vehicle.  It was the first time I’d seen a coyote up close and the first time I’d used my 300mm lens.  What an introduction to both.

 

Today, I’m traveling to Yellowstone National Park and the United States Government has shut down because the Congress did not pass a resolution by midnight yesterday to keep it operating.  Most government operations will cease.   During the last government shutdown in 2013,  I was on another photography trip to Grand Teton National Park.  On that trip, we never were allowed to enter the Park.   And, I thought the same thing was about to happen again.  I thought a government shutdown would prevent our entrance to Yellowstone National Park.   However, apparently a loophole will allow some of the national parks, including Yellowstone, to remain open with limited resources.  So, the trip is on.  But, the public restrooms will be closed.   Wish me luck.

This is a photograph of one of the pools in Yellowstone’s West Thumb Geyser Basin that I took in 2016.  Yellowstone is breathtakingly beautiful in winter and I’m looking forward to exploring Yellowstone in winter again.

Last night at my camera club meeting, I was criticized for the placement of the subject in one of the photographs I submitted for the night’s critique.  The photograph (click here) is of a Sandhill Crane very near to and flying toward the edge of the frame not into the frame.  This is a photo club composition no-no.  In fact, when I first saw the photograph, although  I loved it, when I looked again I thought, “it’s too close to the edge of the frame” meaning, there’s no room for the bird to fly.   I discussed my concerns with Moose and told him that I was showing him the photograph because I loved it but I also knew the bird was in the wrong place in the frame.  He assured me that it wasn’t in the wrong place and that it was really OK to break the rules of composition.  Sometimes that can create a powerful statement which is what I felt in this case.  The bird’s eye is focused on something out of the frame and it is heading toward it.  The placement creates tension and urgency and that contributes to the story.  It’s not just a Sandhill Crane flying…it’s a Sandhill Crane flying someplace.  A couple of club members asked me why I chose to place the bird where I did (I actually didn’t choose it; I was panning and just trying my best to keep the bird in the frame but I liked the result).  One member even offered to move the bird to a better place in the frame using Photoshop.  While I appreciated the generous offer, I told him I knew how to do that but I liked the tension in the photograph.  I don’t think I convinced him.  It was a bit ironic, I thought, because the evening’s judge started out by talking about breaking the rules of composition.  Apparently though, sometimes it isn’t acceptable to break the rules.

Here are two other shots from the sequence.  They are still not ideally placed according to the club, but they are not as close to the edge as the original.  However, the original shot is still my preferred shot because of the bird’s expression and the wing placement.

When the temperatures at Bosque del Apache drop below freezing, the water in the Train Ponds freezes and the legs of the Sandhill Cranes, sleeping in the pond, become encased in ice.  When they awake and begin to move about, bracelets of ice sometimes remain, encircling their legs.  This crane is trying to dislodge the ice bracelet so that he can take off more easily.  It’s looks sort of like the crane is dancing on ice.

 

Ross’s Geese and Snow Geese are very similar looking birds and the vast majority of the geese that we saw at Bosque del Apache were Snow Geese.  But there were some Ross’s Geese mixed in with the Snow Geese and I think the first photograph shows two Ross’s.  The beaks of the two species are slightly different with the Ross’s beak a little shorter and the head a little rounder than the Snow Goose’s.  In the second shot, the most visible bird is a Snow Goose.  The beak is larger and has a large “grinning patch” on the edges of the beak.  The Ross’s beak is shorter with no prominent “grinning patch.”

 

Late afternoon at the Track Ponds in Bosque del Apache marks the end of the day for the Sandhill Cranes.  They return there to roost after feeding all day but there’s always room for whatever delicacies they find on the bottom of the pond.  It really is The Golden Hour there.

Tens of thousands of Snow Geese lift to the skies over and over throughout every day in Bosque del Apache.  Sometimes their flight is triggered by a predator.   We occasionally saw a single Snow Goose paddling in the water after all its flock mates exited, an indication that the bird was not well and would likely soon fall prey to one of the many predators in area, including coyotes, Northern Harriers, and Bald Eagles  I’m not sure if it was this Northern Harrier, seen wings outstretched in the lower left quadrant of the photograph, or a bald eagle we saw a few times in the area that caused this particular exodus but the Harrier was feasting on a Snow Goose.

After waiting so long to get photographs of Homer (or Homer, Jr.) with his entire gorget aglow in glorious magenta (Click here), I got to thinking about what a black and white hummingbird photograph would look like.  After all, there must have been wildlife photographers shooting hummingbirds with black and white film before the days of color film.  I used the Kodak T-Max 100 Pro filter in Macphun’s Tonality CK to convert one of the photos I took a couple of days ago to black and white.  I was amazed to see that this B&W film is still available (at least through B&H Photo) and is described as having a very fine grain and high sharpness.  It is ASA 100 film, the equivalent of ISO 100 on a DSLR but I made the digital exposure at ISO 1600 because it was quite dark on my north facing patio late on a rainy afternoon.  I think the resulting photograph is interesting…a kind of Kodak moment, if you will.

 

Yesterday’s photograph from the Oregon Coast (well techinically it was the California Coast—but it was my Oregon Coast Trip) was in black and white for two reasons:  first, there was almost no color in the original photograph because of the misty, dark, and gloomy skies; and second, I wanted to eliminate what little color there was in the photograph because I wanted the photograph to look stormy and dark, with the wave crashing violently onto the single rock.  Today’s photograph, on the other hand, features color.  It was one of the last photographs I took on the Oregon trip, at Bandon Beach as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.  We stopped shooting a minute or two after I took this shot.    The tide was coming in and the orangey gold hues of the sunset reflect on the tide waters rising toward us.