After a night at a Roosevelt Rough Rider Cabin, on 24 June 2018, we set off to explore the Lamar Valley--known as "America's Serengeti" for its abundance of wildlife. We spent the day hiking and wildlife watching. Although we missed seeing a wolf in person by mere seconds on multiple occasions, we did observe: bison (w/calves), coyotes (w/pups), golden eagle (w/chicks), peregrine falcon, elk, deer (w/fawn), pronghorn antelope, and ground squirrels.
We spent our third day in Yellowstone near the Slough Creek Campground. As Jack, the campground host, told us, bears are the "real deal" around here. He wasn't wrong. After setting up our tent we left the campground around 6:30 AM on 25 June 2018. On the gravel road out to the main road in the Lamar Valley Alison spotted two bears making their way back to the campground. Since we were at least 100 meters away, I jumped out of our car with the rented telephoto lens (Fujinon XF 100-400 mm) and began trying to get some images of the bears. I was also surprised to find two large sandhill cranes in the field keeping a watchful eye on the two bears. (Once I opened the files on my computer at home I realized the two cranes were accompanied by two chicks!)
After photographing the bears and cranes, we drove back to the campground to let Jack and guests know there were two bears headed toward them. When we returned later that evening to sleep, Jack told us about some of the bears antics --needless to say, bears are the "real deal" at Slough Creek Campground!
On our last morning in Yellowstone (26 June, 2018) we drove once more into the Lamar Valley to wolf watch. While there we came upon some adorable bison calves and moms. We also explored some iconic spots including Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Grand Prismatic Spring. Although plenty of other photographs of these iconic spots have been taken by other photographers, I still enjoyed doing so myself. In processing the images of the canyon in particular I noticed a seeming increase in sharpness as I moved from f/16 to f/9.0 on my new Fujinon XF 18-135mm lens.
As we drove south from YNP to Grand Teton National Park, we spotted a canid which was either a giant coyote or a small wolf--Alison and I decided it was indeed a wolf. :-) Unfortunately, Since I wasn't expecting any wolves and we had just come from some landscape shoots, I didn't have the telephoto lens on my camera and wasn't able to get a close-up shot. I suppose that means I need to travel with two cameras next time!
A short trip to Washington D.C. allowed me to visit the Cherry Blossom Festival on April 1. There were lots of people, so taking shots without people was nearly impossible, but I found a few compositions nonetheless. It was nice to see so many enjoying the flowers and to see so many taking photos of loved ones with the trees.
There were a lot of adjectives for this lunar eclipse. I spent a couple of hours photographing the various stages of the total lunar eclipse on the night of January 20th from my driveway. The moon was very high in the sky and was difficult to photograph with any ground based elements so I opted to make a collage of some of the better images I was able to make in-between running inside the house to warm up my camera operating fingers. This was also my first time using Photoshop to merge images together...a fun learning experience.
Why does the Moon turn an orange/red during a total lunar eclipse? It's illuminated by every sunrise and sunset on Earth simultaneously! I can only imagine what Earth would look like from the surface of the Moon during this time...Earth ringed by sunsets and sunrises! Someone needs to photograph that!
Until then, hope you enjoy these!
Last weekend, Sept. 15, 2018, Brennon Pappano and I traveled to Nashville to visit Dury's, The Groove, and The Game Keep. While there we also popped over to Nashville's own version of the Parthenon and I took these photos on my X-T1. Although I forgot and left my camera set on jpg mode, I still think I ended up with some nice images of lines, light, and shadow. After experimenting with some different B&W processing in LR I thought I'd share these.
