This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
Well, after waiting all this time, all we learn is that Ryan Zinke didn’t recommend the elimination of any of the 27 monuments to President Trump, but that he did recommend the down-sizing of an unknown number (above and beyond Bears Ears National Monument) and removing use restrictions for some or all of them. I guess it could have been worse. (Actually, it could still turn out to be worse. It’s in Trump’s hands now.)
This puma may look menacing, but she is just finishing off a nice long yawn. She is called “Sister” and the few times we saw her she was very relaxed. In fact, she did a lot of sleeping when we saw her, just like my cat, Rosie, here at home.
I was driving through the Golden Gate area of Yellowstone on May 24, 2015, scanning the cliffs for mountain goats as I drove. I didn’t see any goats (as is usually the case), but did see this nest of ravens. The babies were small (and with few feathers), but I made a mental note to check on them every time I drove through there for the rest of my stay in Yellowstone. The last time I saw them was June 14, a few days before I headed home. This photo was taken June 3. Believe it or not, there are six of these little ravens in the nest. These three just happened to be the most hungry when I shot this photo. Note the blue eyes common to young animals.
I don’t enter photo contests very often because it is hard to win when there are thousands of entries, at least in the most prestigious ones, and judging is, understandably, very subjective. However, I decided to enter the 2015 Yellowstone Forever Photo Contest put on by Nature’s Best Photography Magazine and the Yellowstone Park Foundation because Yellowstone is my favorite place and I have lots of images from there. There were 11,000 entries from 31 countries. This raven nest photo was awarded an Honorable Mention as was the black bear spring cub below.
Two friends, Max Waugh and Daniel Dietrich, were also awarded honorable mentions. In fact, Max won seven honorable mentions! Click here for a list of all the winners and honorable mentions.
There are several reasons I tend to not enter many nature photo contests. The first reason is that entering takes a lot of time and the odds of winning are very low because there are thousands of entries. The odds are also low because of the subjective nature of judging. Art can’t be judged objectively.
Another reason is that some (but not the Nature’s Best contest) are designed to be rights grabs. By that I mean they charge you to enter and they provide in the fine print that they can use your photos for any purpose with no compensation to you. Think about that. Instead of you getting paid by for the commercial use of your photo, you in effect pay them to use it when you enter the contest! What a great way for a magazine to get many years’ worth of photos without having to pay for them! Read the fine print before you enter a contest!
Yet another reason I pass on most nature photography contests is because they strictly follow photojournalism standards. In other words, the photo has to be a faithful representation of the original scene, except dust spotting, cropping, exposure changes and color balance are usually allowed because they were practiced in the film/darkroom days. I have had to pass on entering many photos I like because a little twig is in the way of a clear facial shot. I wish the dust spot exception were expanded a little to allow the removal of the twig that crosses an animal’s face. Another solution would be to have an “artistic” category in contests where some manipulation is allowed. After all, we are way past film and darkrooms. Photoshop rules and I think nature photography contests need to recognize that. If an artist were painting the same scene, you can be sure that little twig would never make it onto the canvas.
There are other concerns I have about nature photography contests, such as use of captive subjects and baiting, but I’ll save those topics for another day.
When this two year old brown bear cub lifted its head and stared at me, it reminded me of a pika. If you’ve ever seen a pika with its mouth full of grasses to be stored for the winter, you know what I mean.-
When my two friends and I went to Torres del Paine National Park to photograph pumas in May of 2016 the animal we saw most often was the guanaco. The guanaco is a camel-like animal. It stands 3 to 4 feet at the shoulder and weighs 200 to 300 lbs. It is the primary large prey species of the puma in Patagonia.
Guanacos live in herds composed of females, their young, and a dominant male. When they see a puma, they alert the herd to flee with a high-pitched, bleating call. We were always listening for those calls and we heard them fairly frequently.
In writing this I paid a quick visit to Wikipedia. I knew that in addition to guanacos there are similar camelid animals called called llamas, vicunas and alpacas in South America. However, I was surprised to learn that guanacos are the wild parent of the domestic llama. Likewise, the vicuna is the wild parent to the domesticated alpaca. In that way they are like the wild caribou and its domesticated descendant, the reindeer. At least I knew that relationship.
In May 2016 I went to Torres del Paine National Park with two friends in search of pumas or mountain lions as we know them. The park is on the Chilean side of Patagonia. We had great success in that we saw 18 different pumas in six days and photographed twelve of them, as I recall. It involved a lot of hiking. This puma, however, showed itself when we were driving back to our hotel after sunset.
Pumas are protected in Chile, but they kill some sheep and the ranchers shoot them without regard to the law on ranches throughout Chile (and Argentina). Fortunately, many more pumas are safe today thanks to the work of conservationist Doug Tompkins and his wife, Kris, who have bought millions of acres of ranches and converted those lands into national parks with the cooperation of Chile and adjoining Argentina. Unfortunately, Doug died in a kayaking accident in December of 2015. His wife, however, continues his legacy. For more about Doug Tompkins, see this article.
My last two mornings at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge we had very low tides. That brought the bears from the sedge grass meadows to the tidelands. I was amazed to learn how well the bears find the clams. They quickly smell them through little holes or vents in the sand that go from the clams up to the surface. It’s also amazing how easily they use their big claws to pry open the shells. They are very efficient at it. Not a lot of meat from each clam, but I guess it adds up and is a welcome change from their mostly grass diets.
