Today’s offering is a snowy owl.

Okay, so it isn’t a true Snowy Owl per se, but it is an owl and although it is difficult to tell from this photo, it was snowing big time when I shot this set.  In case you do not know your owls, this is actually a Barred Owl and lucky for us, one that calls our woods his home.  To be honest, based on the hoots that ring out around the area around 5 pm there are at least 4 of them taking up residence near us.

Hit the jump to see even more pictures of the Barred Owl.

Owls have the distinction of both exciting and concerning me.  I put these birds up there with eagles when it comes to the majestic feeling they provide whenever luck would have it and they make themselves visible.  They are clearly unique in the bird world and exude an air of confidence that tends to come right through the camera glass.  Owls tend to be pretty calm and will slowly assess the danger of a situation (like staring down at The Beast) and move off to safety at about 100 feet at a time.  This makes them pretty easy to track… and try again if you screwed up the shot. This is exactly what our specimen was preparing to do in the following shot. Although it is not the best composition, I included it here since it gives a good view from the side so you can see the full markings.

But there is a flip side to these creatures that causes some nervousness in the household.  Owls are pretty aggressive when it comes to their hunting skills.  Not only are they not afraid of larger birds (they managed to kill an eagle at Wildlife Prairie Park and there are plenty of other accounts of that out there), they have the ability to snatch up small animals in their enormous talons.  As owners of champion toy poodles this is an ever threat.  We do not let our dogs go out alone and tend to make our presence known in case any of these predators are hanging around.  Our youngest is probably too big for these guys now, but our oldest is in the 5-6 pound range which is probably not far out of its standard hunting preference.   I doubt it would risk coming this close to the house and the other dog (they go out together), but I tend to keep an eye open for any large shadows or large round eyes peering through the trees.  If there is one event that might put my wife in the hospital, it is probably having Kerby scooped up by an owl – a close second is having an owl drop a snake in her convertible as it flew by.

Did I mention it was snowing hard while trying to capture this owl.  The things I do for my blog peeps (someone feeling guilty yet?)

I should probably mention that Linda should get a big thanks for making this set possible.  She came home one late afternoon and informed me she spotted this owl sitting alongside the road about a mile away.  Without hesitation I grabbed the Beast (which is always at the ready),  jumped into the car and had Linda backtrack.  It had moved up into a tree further back, but sure enough it was there.  After a few shots, it became concerned about the big glass and flew off up the road … about 100 feet).  Linda was in full tracker mode and continue to move the car into position.  In the meantime I was fighting the camera controls in an attempt to accommodate the poor shooting conditions.  The snow was obviously playing havoc on the autofocus and the clouds were not letting much light through at all (the teleconverter was on so the light was already restricted).  The fact that the shots came out at all is a small festivus miracle.

After a couple more short flights, the owl landed on a bus sign which immediately made me smile.

Some things just materialize in your head for odd reasons – as soon as the focus and exposure were the way I wanted it, the vision of the owl waiting for the school bus in order to get wiser took shape… and you thought that was just and old myth.  You can really tell the snow in this shot but the Beast was able to slice through it nicely.  By now, this owl was getting a little irked at being followed – you can almost tell that from its expression above.  As before, it tried to distance itself from us again.

This is another shot that the composition seems to work pretty well.  The vertical lines of the metal shed line up nicely with the pole while the straight wires give nice character to the overall shot.  I may be biased here, so feel free to provide your opinions in the comments – don’t worry, I’m a big boy, so constructive criticism is always accepted.

… or do you like a little more zoom

About now, the owl is probably full on pissed at me but was keeping his calm.  For the most part it did not want to take its big black eyes off of the big glass.  Quite frankly I do not blame it.  I included the following shot because it looks kinda spooky.  At one point during a burst shot it must have gotten a snowflake in the eye and blinked producing a cool image with nice blue eyes.  It was shaking it’s head so sorry for the slight blur on the face.  Not a gallery shot by any  means, but definitely interesting.

Lastly, I thought it would be a good time to demonstrate why we shoot in RAW format.  I keep reading article after article about how you need to get the shot perfect in the camera (compensation and exposure) and how post editing is unprofessional on and on and on.  My response.. bullshit.  How exactly is using the digital dark room cheating any more that shooting in Aperture mode and letting the camera select the proper shutter speed to get your desired field of view, how is it an different than employing the latest sensor matrix comparison for proper exposure?  translated.. just elitist crap – Ansel Adams was the king of darkroom tricks and yes, my wife already outed “no-shop” Peter Lik for an old interview where he admitted to shopping pictures (that was a big disappointment for her by the way and still holds a grudge on that).  Do what you want, but I’ll focus my attention on getting the shot in the tin and clean up white balance and composition later.  I’ll take a clean up shot any day over half a wing in the frame thanks to futzing around with the menu system.  Now this doesn’t make up for getting the shot in focus and in general the histogram right! – get the fundamentals right and just make it better in the digital darkroom.  So here is your example.  These shots were in the 3200 ISO range, snowing/cloudy conditions with teleconverter on which even reduced the lighting more.  What was actually captured in the RAW …well

As long as you know what you can do in Lightroom, you can instead focus your time on the bird and not your camera’s menu system.

Hope you enjoyed.  There are more on the way.

Initially I was pretty excited about the opportunity to bring you a NEW bird sighting.  Over the course of about a week I kept hearing a very unique bird song.  It was almost like three distinct sounds that it would alternate through repeatedly.  Probably the most fascinating thing about this was how loud it was.  I would be out back and still hear the singing coming from the front woods.  Three times I ran inside, grabbed The Beast and went looking for the source.  Eventually the search would be narrowed down to a couple of trees, but the sound would either stop or there would be a rustle of leaves followed by some non-distinguishable bird launching itself in a different direction.  A few minutes later the chatter would start up again a couple hundred feet away.  Get close to it again and I’m in another rinse and repeat cycle.  As luck would have it, I stepped out of the truck one evening after a run and heard it again.  This damn bird was not going to school me again (earlier that day I had failed at another attempt even with Linda help in track it down).  Clearly stealth is the key so I grabbed the trusty Nikon and slinked my way over to the woods.  It took a some patience, but eventually it was spotted sitting on some high branches.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures!

There the bird sat cycling through it’s various songs one after another just as loud as possible.  Following my general strategy, I made sure some shots hit the tin before working to improve the composition.  The problem with this is the number of branches that were in the way.  The fear was stepping out into an opening would spook it, so most of the shots were taken by shifting back and forth in the woods trying to find the clearest path to the subject – oh, the hardships of wildlife photography (ha!).  To be honest, the identity of this particular bird was a mystery.  Having learned a valuable lesson in the past, the goal was to get as many angles as possible to make the trek through the guides as easy as possible.  This shot gave the best angle for the breast coloring.

As you can see from the next shot, the challenge of the shoot was not so much the branches themselves, but also trying to compensate for the shadows that were being thrown from the low hanging sun. Kind of looks Blade Runner-ish doesn’t it?

It was actually an enjoyable shoot.  Having the big glass out I could experience the bird up close and personal.  The surprising feature was just how large the mouth was.  The big mouth bass of the beak world if you will.  With that said, this specimen was not of the woodpecker family.  Another noted feature was the cool yellow eyes….

Wait a minute!  Yellow eyes, and a long beak… hmmm…and then some disappointment began to emerge.  A quick check of some bird books revealed that it was a Brown Thrasher.  In case you are having the same deja-vu, head on over here (link) to see my first encounter with this bird.  Sorry readers, not a new bird to the blog.  The good news is I think the shot quality is better so the shoot was not a waste.

Hey, almost forgot to include some interesting (subjective of course) facts about this noisy bird.  They do indeed like to repeat their patterns in a rhythmic manner which is fairly unique among the bird species.  There is very little difference between the juveniles and adults, but the lack of deeper coloring at the sides of the breast would almost lend itself to a juvi in this case – according to the reference pictures, there is suppose to be some yellowing on the breast near the wings – not to mention the spotting on the chest is a little faded looking.  Looks like it winters in the South so this one is right on track for the migration period (assumed it would come early this year with the warmer temperatures).  They tend to be secretive, hiding in the trees until they start their songs after the heat of the day – the bird guides nailed this feature based on my experiences.  It is actually in the same family as the Mockingbird.  Lastly,  the numbers are in decline likely due to loss of habitat, but our friends over in Wikipedia land still list it as “least concern” conversation status – that does not mean you can take your safeties off and work out the kinks in your itchy trigger fingers!

OH NO!

I’ve been spotted and those yellow eyes mean business.  Time to make a run for it.

As a professional IT Architect, I’ve spent most of my professional career designing and consulting on large computing systems.  To grossly simplify this landscape, there are really two defined camps in this space.  One camp puts forth the mantra of interoperability is king with a nod to Best in Breed.  The other camp preaches the tight integration card with a willingness to reduce capabilities at a gain of simplicity.  The challenge is to mediate between these ideologies and come up with the best solution.  For years, the Best of Breed camp enjoyed big success riding the benefits of reduced vendor lock in and the ability to pick and choose the best answer for each specific need.  This all started changing about 10 years ago when the complexities of integration and the inability for vendors to deliver on open standards (I’m speaking to you SUN).  Suites and proprietary solutions found their weak spot in the system armor.  Since then, the Best of Breed roar has become more of a whimper and the vendor suites have become as sweet as they sound.  There is one place where this battle raging … probably the last real battleground for this argument.  Any guesses where that is?  If you guessed the mobile computing field, you are dead on… and the players?  No need for extra power to the synapse – Android vs Apple.

I am on the Android side of this colossal tug of war.  As of such I am barraged with the “It Just Works” sermons from the other camp.  Apple is so great because everything just works, my Apple products are a gift from heaven because they just work, I did not even have to do anything special to get this new feature functioning because it just works.   Hell, Apple is so cool I’ll immediately go out an buy the next version even though it doesn’t really provide me much more value, but I know it will just work even better than what I have.  Wow, I have to hand it to Apple, their marketing arm is amazing.  I can see how this would be so appealing based on the quirks and idiosyncrasies we encounter with their competitors.  Clearly there is room for improvement in the other devices, but what is the price of that discomfort over the benefit of not being held captive to a vendor that essentially limits your freedom on what can and cannot run on YOUR computing device?  To me, that price is $100.  I can say that because we bought an HP Touchpad during their fire sale.  A quick mod of the kernel and we had swapped out the WebOS for Android!  Linda now had a fairly functional tablet device she could use for her photography business and (gasp) Facebook.  The downside of this is Linda had to put up with the quirks.  Not a big deal for me, but I can understand the annoyances of not everything working all the time but some of that is due to bad programming – take for example the Facebook app requiring a location indicator before it will run – this was solved with a fake GPS app, but again, it took some effort to figure out what was wrong.

Flash forward to last month when I decided to breakdown and get Linda an iPad HD.  Her photography business was doing well and figured switching over to that platform would work out for her… and we all know .. it just works!  Eventually this showed up in the mail:

Hit the jump to read the rest of the story

64Gs with the cellular option.  The very first task was to get it loaded up with the Apps she has on her iTouch.  To do this all we needed was a quick connection to our wireless internet and we’d be good to go… oh no.  For some strange reason it refused to connect.  Our iTouches connect up just fine to it as well as both our PCs.  Maybe a quick look at the Internet will show what we did wrong.  Jump on the Windows PC, hit the Internet without issue and there we were met with link after link of other consumer problems with Apple Wifi.  Wait a minute, the whole story line is “It Just Works” and yet I’m reading on the Apple site about things to try and fix the problem including the quite hilarious option to turn up the brightness on the screen.  Nothing appeared to fix it even after changing all the settings on the wireless uplink (including the entire security mechanism) — nope, no luck.  On the other hand it was working fine with the Verizon Hotspot (when we were forced to use).

A week later we took the new iPad with us to Wisconsin on a photography shoot.  To help pass the down time we took an educational DVD with us on how to shoot big game in Yellowstone National Park.  I had already watched it, but wanted Linda to view it.  Since the packaging said it was iPod enabled it seemed like a great opportunity to check out the concept of watching videos on the iPad.  After the day’s shoot we were relaxing at the hotel and decided to watch the DVD.  Of course we can’t just put the files on the iPad directly, instead we have to start up iTunes, move the files over to iTunes and then let it transfer them  to the device.  This is an uber-annoyance but apparently this is a tradeoff for things just working.  iTunes was loaded, the DVD was loaded and now just need to copy the iPod folder on the DVD to iTunes.   Ummm, iTunes refuses to accept the dropped on files.  Apparently this device doesn’t understand .mp4 extension which I thought was one of Apples supported platforms  A couple more attempts resulted in the same bad results.  I am now officially 0-2 on the concept of “It Just Works!”  Granted, there re plenty of things that did work correctly, but if you are going to hammer me with reasoning of it just works it better damn work.

There is a bright spot in all of this (well, for me, not my brother).  I did download Flowers HD which looks great on the new iPad and now that I can practice I’ll once again rule the high scorers list in the family.

The other surprising bonus was pointed out by a friend of mine.  To go along with the  iPad, I also bought Linda the camera accessories so she could simply plug in adapter in and view her photography pictures directly from the SD card (let me re-phrase that – Apple forced me to spend more money for functionality that should already be available!)  It appeared to work by requiring the images to be imported into the gallery which did not seem that efficient  but did work.  Turns out that the Wii keyboard (which we own) will work as an external keyboard by putting the USB receiver into the Apple USB camera adapter.   Now that is also something that did just work.  Note, the Air Stash product my brother turned us onto works a lot better with the iPad – it creates a hot spot for the SD cards and allows us to view it directly off the card rather than importing them – SCORE!  Now Linda can simply take the JPG card out after a shoot, stick it in the Air Stash and put it in slideshow mode for potential customers.

The best part of all this is she gave me the TouchPad to use.  Having an Android phone already, all of my apps were immediately uploaded (free I might add) to the tablet and all seemed to perform great.  In order to benefit from the latest code base and hopefully address a quirk encountered on our corporate wireless network I decided to upgrade from Cyanogenmod CM7 to CM9 (Ice Cream Sandwich).  A quick look at an online video (recommend those uploaded by reverendkjr) reminded me of the process, a download of the required configuration files, copied those files to the HP (by the way DIRECTLY USING USB) and executing the load command from the PC was all that was needed to complete this task.  Rather than wait for it, I went to clean the rifles.  On return, sure enough, I was the proud owner of this.

Guess what, it kept all my app settings and a quick check of the wireless, email, apps stores and a couple of installed apps all confirmed that “It just Works”.  The result of all this .. Linda is happy with her condom wearing computing tablet and I’m happy with a tablet that I control even it if exposes me to a few errrr, quirks, yeah, quirks.

I hauled the new 24 inch Insignia upstairs and began the process of switching out the old TV (with a tear in the eye – like losing an old friend).

• Take the cable off the old TV
• Haul the old TV off the shelf and put it in the backroom
• Take the new TV out of the box
• Take all the protective coverings and stickers off
• Find a screwdriver to attach the stand to the base
• Attach the stand to the TV
• Attach the cable to the new TV
• Put the TV back up on the shelf
• Unwrap the remote and batteries
• Load the batteries into the remote and start navigating menus to program the channels
• Wait for it to find channel 3 and 14 and ….ugh

The new TV would not find channel 14.  A quick jump back, we have Dish Network for our TV subscription on two receivers.  This allows me to watch Top Shot while Linda watches drivel.  One receiver mainlines to a the coax on channel 3 while the second receiver’s output has the channel pushed up to channel 14 and then unsplit (technical term for running a splitter backwards) to combine it back into the mainline.  Turn to channel 3 you can watch one satellite, simply switch to channel 14 and you can watch the other – add in UHF remotes and we have complete freedom to watch our shows on any TV we want.  Apparently this new LED TV isn’t recognizing the uplifted channel.  No big deal, I’ll just add it in manually.  A few menu clicks and sure enough there is an Add Channel option.  Sweet, just keypad in the number 14 and … and .. and .. umm there is no entry field.  All it provides is a list of channels it found allowing you to delete or add from what it found in the scan.  You have go to be kidding me.  A quick check on the internet confirmed this.  There was an account of someone who had a rotating aerial to pull in Canadian and American signals.  The company’s response to his issue (same as mine, not being able to add manually) was “The menu is acting as designed and simply running the rescan every time you move the aerial will solve the problem”.  His response – I’m boxing it up and sending it back immediately.

Hit the jump to see how this story turns out.

That sounded like an excellent idea – they might want to check the V.O.B. next time you bring a product to market.  Play the steps above in reverse and add a trip back to Best Buy to return it.  Linda was insistent that I pick another one out since it was a Christmas gift.  Fine, a review of all the TVs on their display shelf (which included a check that I could add channels manually) ended up with the purchase of a Magnavox LED TV – my other TV was a Magnavox, it has worked reliably why not.   We bring it home and.

• Take the cable off the old TV
• Haul the old TV off the shelf and put it in the backroom
• Take the new TV out of the box
• Take all the protective coverings and stickers off
• Find a screwdriver to attach the stand to the base
• Attach the stand to the TV
• Attach the cable to the new TV
• Put the TV back up on the shelf
• Unwrap the remote and batteries
• Load the batteries into the remote and start navigating menus to program the channels
• Wait for it to find channel 3 and 14 and yep, good to go.

It found the channels alright, but the sound was similar to piping the audio through a PC chassis speaker – and mono sounding to boot.  The audio menu provided little help even with the bass turned up and the treble turned down.  If there is one aspect of the TV I use, it is the sound so the primary use was already taking a hit.  Maybe I could learn to live with it.  Then another odd quirk was noticed.  Fortunately, there was a show involving night driving which identified this defect immediately.  Whenever a brighter white light came across the screen, it would produce a horizontal line out from that spot to both left and right edges of the screen.  Not just a small line either, but one about 10 or so pixels – visibly annoying for sure.  Not wanting to take another one back I tried my best to get used to it.  After a day of this my tolerance was full.  Reverse the steps above all the way back to Best Buy where AGAIN Linda convinced me to try once again.  Sigh, what to do, what to do?  Turns out that there was a larger LG version on sale – it was a 28″ LED TV again, but as probably guessed more expensive that the two worthless product acquired previously.  LG has delivered good products for me in the past (my computer monitor is gorgeous)  so what the heck – one final try.

• Take the cable off the old TV
• Haul the old TV off the shelf and put it in the backroom
• Take the new TV out of the box
• Take all the protective coverings and stickers off
• Find a screwdriver to attach the stand to the base
• Attach the stand to the TV
• Attach the cable to the new TV
• Put the TV back up on the shelf
• Unwrap the remote and batteries
• Load the batteries into the remote and start navigating menus to program the channels
• Wait for it to find channel 3 and 14 and yep, good to go.

With little expectations I flipped to a show.  Wow, the screen looked fantastic on both channel 3 and the uplifted channel.  Not only that, the sound was awesome and even rivaled the quality on our much more expensive sets.   Okay, the real test – find some white lights.  This turned out to be a chore, but eventually we had a test case.  Houston we have a QUALITY PRODUCT.

Clearly there is a leader in the LED TV space and that leader is Life’s Good.  The intriguing part of this is I have to be the easiest person to please in the TV market.  Video quality is low on my list beyond a level that was met decades ago (do not remember white lines across any of the TVs I’ve ever had).  Topping it off, my phone has a better speaker than they put in the Magnavox and yet these two products made it to the showroom floor.  Which company do you think is going to get my future business and it never even got to a service call.

All in all, it turned out to be a good thing – or rather really good in the beginning and eventually tapering off as he began to hone in on the portrait details.  There were a number of thought provoking concepts scattered throughout the first half of the book.  The one that touched home was the belief that photography is a journey.  This I can relate to.  I’ll probably never get to where I’d like to be with this form of art, but looking back it is pretty easy to tell that there has been significant progress since those younger years of shooting film.  Granted, some of this is due to an improved income which enables better equipment, but there is a definite change in how I compose a shot and there is more interest for me beyond the common postcard shots on our vacations.  To sum it up, my shots are more about what I want to remember from a trip and less what I want to be able to show people where we went.  If there was one sentence in this book that stood out for me, it was definitely in the Afterword by Vincent Versace.  “Most likely there is one image that sent you on the path of photography.”  Wow, that is a tough one.  My early interest in photography was thanks to my brother Ron who would take me out with him to parks and what not to take pictures with the trusty 35mm Nikon – I still remember shooting deer in a park in Rockford and even further back when we were out chasing the moon on country backroads trying to get the perfect angle for a shot (don’t ask).  However when the digital age came I likely embraced that ahead of him when my wife and I would head out to the local wildlife park to shoot the animals.  At some point I came upon the work of Joel Sartore (link here) and Scott Linstead (link here). From that moment on the hook was set.  If I was to answer for Linda she’d probably go with Ansel Adams and me (hehehe, sorry had to get the dig in since she is currently lagging in the awards department – If she reads this, she’ll probably make some crazy excuse for what that isn’t true, but the jury has already rendered their decision!)  Take the time to ask yourself that very same question and see what you come up with.  The look back is well worth the time.

So if there is one aspect that gets some scrutiny, it has to be the impression that you should just travel somewhere and immerse yourself in the culture and come back with great shots.  First of all, depending on what your preferences are you could be carrying more than the locals would see in their lifetime.  Second of all, depending on your heritage, you might not be welcome in certain parts.  This thought made me cringe when he wrote “When seeing and capturing the spirit of a place, nothing can compete with wandering on foot and getting good and lost, Not momentarily lost, but completely and unfindably lost….you have no idea if it will open …. into a narrow alley that is the de-facto red-light district of town.  Clearly David has knowledge, experience and contacts that far exceed most of us and this familiarity allows him greater freedom the other cultures.  However, the thought of walking around in the back alleys and local haunts seems dangerous at best especially carrying stuff that says Nikon or Canon on it.  Hell, even he mentioned he was almost arrested for taking a picture of a Muslim girl.  To his credit, he does recommend using resources like Lonely Planet before you go, but for my comfort we’ll pick safer shoots and keep the danger to just the footing.

It does look like duChemin is an active blogger (http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/) so check him out if you want to learn more about him and his art – described as World and Humanitarian Photographer.

Hit the jump to see my takeaways (which were actually more than initially anticipated)

Takeaways:

• It’s a book about chasing your vision and telling your stories as clearly and passionately as possible with compelling photography.  I actually like how concise this sentence is and rings true – I guess lucky for me, I’m a long way from producing my vision so it doesn’t look like photography will get boring for me anytime soon
• Vision is the beginning and end of photography
• Finding and expressing your vision is a journey, not a destination
• If you don’t love photography for the sheer act of trying to express yourself, , yours will be a disappointing journey
• Photography is deeply subjective .. it will tell the truths and the lies – we have witnessed the latter all to much recently on both sides of the camera – those that distort the truth and those that try to keep the lies hidden.
• It’s about creating images that others will care about – I think this is the big difference between hobby and occupation – in truth as a hobby I care more about images that please me first and other second – this would be flipped if I was having to rely on this for a living
• David is definitely not drawn to wildlife subjects
• You are responsible for the images you take – you decide what is in and what is out
• When you press the shutter ask yourself what it is that is compelling you to capture the image
• As photographic storytellers, it is our job to ruthlessly exclude every element with the frame that is not part of the story
• Merely filling the frame with something exotic does not make it a good photograph
• Consider the look of your images beyond just getting the exposure right.
• Recommend panning shots at 1/30 or 1/15 of a second shutter speeds – in truth, these panning shots really don’t interest me unless it is related to sports – otherwise the background generally seems distracting to me
• Know you camera well enough to change the important setting without looking up from viewfinder – this is something I have been working to get better at, but with the big lens, it is to difficult to hold the glass while making the necessary changes
• Why become addicted to the how of photography … and when that happens the why and the what suffer – this is the same author that just told me to know how to change my settings without looking!
• And then proceeds to write: By all means, geek out the gear, but don’t forget that without vision the whole thing falls apart and devolves
• Digital noise always lo0ks crappy – this is my constant battle – trying to keep the ISO down but keeping the shutter speed high enough to compensate for the wiggle with the huge glass and the movement of the wildlife
• This histogram: shadows without detail on the left – highlights without detail on the far right – latter of which is almost impossible to get back beyond a stop even in raw – push your shots to the right of the graph without letting it go past.
• 85-135mm are considered best portrait glass – higher and the face has an unflattering compression
• Once again, here’s the rule of thirds but don’t be constrained by it
• Three images go into a final photograph – the image you envision, the image you capture and the image you produce in the digital darkroom
• In Photoshop there is no Un-Suck filter – sweet, a little coding and I can be a millionaire
• He totes along a small printer to give as payment for people allowing him to photograph them
• The first thing is to realize that the creative process is not so simple that it can be reduced to a formula – which is why I get a little irked when photography sites write as absolute truths and not recommendations
• Nothing kills creativity, inspiration or motivation like self-pity, self-doubt and self preoccupation – well that, and a jittery bird
• Inspiration means to breathe in
• Recommends getting out of your rut – force yourself to try a different style, subject .. break your rules – reading a book on portrait photography when you are a wildlife photographer seems to fit that bill
• Photographs must be about something – I guess I’ll buy this belief if the about can have no meaning to anyone else but the photographer
• Recommends studying National Geographic for tips on how to create photo essays
• A good story has a sense of wonder, it raises curiosity and it leaves something untold for us to gnaw on – tough to do this in wildlife photography, but this maybe why shots of animals staring off the frame (not at the photographer) so intrigues us
• David brings up the hotly debated topic of paying people as compensation for taking their picture – he doesn’t really take a position other than saying he generally doesn’t, but I know he gives them printouts of this shots – he also has strong feelings toward not taking the remaining dignity by exploiting another’s misfortune
• He also touches upon photographing kids – this issue is getting out of hand by the overprotective populous, but this is exactly why I spend my time in the wildlife arena – in a way, they are far more civil
• Know the laws of where you are photographing – that which won’t get you arrested just might get you stoned – this goes for all the new homeland security laws that have been the rage as of late
• Again, the difference between hobby and occupation – his clients don’t pay him to travel light, they pay him to come home with shots
• Recommends the Lonely Planet books to learn about where you shouldn’t go when traveling
• F/8 and be there.. well, mainly be there
• Important to remember there are few places in the world that have not been photographed – avoid the cliche shot by concentrating on the unique way to take the cliche shot
• Apparently the Taj Mahal is just another dusty tourist attraction – did learn that the emperor that built it was imprisoned by his son for misspending the nation’s wealth
• Provide a point of reference if you want to demonstrate things like size to the viewer
• Look for patterns and broken patterns
• Sun – put aperture down to f/16 or deeper if you want a starburst effect
• Culture is the outward expression of the inner life of a particular demographic – very nicely articulated!
• Apparently do not take a picture of a woman in a Muslim neighborhood
• In many parts of the world you do not eat with your left hand… there is a reason for this and it is because of what the left hand is used for in those parts
• They say if you can shoot food well, you can shoot anything well

Profit =  Money Gained – Money Spent

Money Gained = Customer Money Spent

Customer Money Spent = Customer Satisfaction (yes, this is dependent on the industry since there are clear examples of customers spending money that are not happy about it at all)

so by association:

Profit = Customer Satisfaction.

Are there really any business people out there that do not understand the fact that satisfied customers lead to more profits?  Granted a loss may not be realized at the time the bad service is experienced (again, because there are some transactions that occur because there are no other options at that point in time), but looking forward, is that same customer going to subject herself to another bad experience or seek a more customer friendly vendor?  Thinking this is probably covered in Business Class 001.   I write that, yet I now have had 4 experiences this week alone that brings that into question (actually it should have been 3 but I broke my rule which allowed one of them to happen – more on that later).

Three of these experiences are directly related to a decision to increase my zombie survival coefficient – well, that and disgust over reading public statements by Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel who apparently hasn’t read the US Constitution and thinks he can restrict my rights to bear arms – but I digress.  Needless to say I did some research and had a general idea of what I wanted to purchase.  There were some questions on features and model variations but figured those could be easily handled by the expert at the store.  So off I went with Linda to check out the local offerings.  First off was Gander Mountain, a chain Sportsman/Outfitter that generally carries a number of different makes and models.  Up to the counter we went with a pretty high degree of excitement (well, I was excited, Linda .. not so much).  Their clerks were busy with other people so I walked over to the area I was interested in and started looking at the different options.  After exhausting everything I could find out about the different models and trying my best to match them up with my catalog, I turned back to get some help.  Still nobody available – more time to double check the catalog and pick a few up to check the weights and feel… anybody?  nope… guess I’ll try to figure out which one was posted in their ad we saw at the entrance to the store… ummm .. can’t even match that one.. finally I caught the attention of a lady working behind the counter.  Great, now to get down to business.

and to do that you need to hit the jump

“Can you tell me which one of these are on sale?”

Response was in the neighborhood of “we do not have any of those on sale.”

Ugh, we get the ad and I show her the one in there that says it is $100 off.  Turns out it was just a factory rebate, but they were definitely advertising it as if it was a sale price.  Anyway she now knows what we were talking about so went to the same area to find it… no luck  – she was then forced to ask the other young clerk which one it was.  “I think we’re out.”  and then picks up a tag off the counter and confirms their out of it.  That was not a big deal for me since I really wanted another model.. which I couldn’t find there either.  After two more questions were met with blank stares she finally punted and asked the guy to come take care of me.  What followed was the second most unhelpful discussion of the night.

“What model is that?”

“Dont know”

“What’s the difference between these two models”

“One is more expensive”

“How does this other brand compare to the one I wanted”

“Well, the police are using it now so it must be good”

“What does this button do?”

“I don’t know, but a military friend of mine says he’s never had to push it.”

My patience had worn down by then and decided this was a total waste of time!

So off to Presley’s Southside Worm Ranch.  You probably just laughed, but it is a great local store for everything redneck.  After a 15 minute+ drive we walked up to the door only to realize the clerk was locking up for the night – It was eight, they close at eight I have no problem with that but kicking myself for wasting so much time at Gander.  We were out and the evening was on a downer so we decided to head over to Bass Pro Shop to see what they had.  I was not that optimistic based on the comments of others who had been there.  It may be a huge chain, but they apparently are not passing on their buying power to their customers.  At least they should have a decent variety of inventory to check out.  20 minute drive later we were walking up to the counter.  Correction, Linda was done with this for the night so headed off to check out some other departments.  The clerk there was helping out another couple so I patiently took up a position down by the section I was interested in.  Eventually another older guy came by and asked me if I needed some help.  YES!  “Can you tell me if you carry this model?”- pointing to a page in my catalog.  He proceeds to turn back to the racks behind him and turns over a couple of tags, glances at them and then and turns back and looks at me.  Meanwhile, I’m saying to myself “He didn’t even look at the model number on the page, what is he trying to compare to?”  I took his silence to mean they didn’t have it so I asked him which one was the one in their ad.  He turns back, rifles through the tags again and pulls one out and proceeds to aim it up at the ceiling… and then it turned really bizarre.  He lowers it and proceeds to spout of all the knowledge he has on it -

“Well, you know this is really just company X”.

“Really, I was not aware of that I thought they were their own company”

“I know that because it comes in a different box in the back”

“Interesting” [not really, I could not care less and for the record, company X does not OWN them, they are sister brands under a conglomerate]

“You know, this company and this company are really the same too”  – which might have been remotely interesting if either of those companies pertained to my inquiry

“What size ammo that chambered for?”

“You have to look on the barrel because that is where they put that information” as he starts looking all over for it

“Turn it over and look just past the trigger”… or look at the damn tag hanging off the trigger guard

“Oh, there it is”

“Can I se…”

and this is when he literally turns his back to me and replaces it back in the rack!  Now I am furious.  This was suppose to be an enjoyable event and now I’m extremely aggravated that not one, but two large chain stores have totally failed to deliver expected levels of service – especially since I was there to actually BUY a fairly high priced discretionary item.

I opted to swallow a comment and instead I turned away and went to find Linda.

The next day I went back to the Worm Ranch and had an incredibly satisfying experience with a very knowledgeable employee that was able to answer every question I had!  I thanked him for his attention and mentioned how much better it was that my experiences the other night.  His response “That is why we are STILL in business”.

Now I have to chastise myself for a stop I made a few days later.  The Worm Ranch is a significant drive and since I only needed a small item decided to stop back in at Gander Mountain since it was literally on my way home.  I gathered up my one item and decided to check out what they had for ammo.  Once the proper caliber was located I became intrigued that there were two offerings from the same vendor but one was 10 bucks and the other was 20 for the same count.  Each description was scrutinized for any indication of a difference that would justify the premium price.  Nothing on the box gave a clue … well that I could decipher.  A glance towards the counter I was at a few days before discovered a different person working that looked older .. and therefore assumed more knowledgeable.  A chance to redeem themselves.  I took the two boxes up to the counter and asked them (there was now two back there) if they could tell me the difference.  With eager anticipation I awaited their wisdom.  Response “Don’t know, but everything in that bright green box is always higher” .  You have got to be kidding me.  Another try “What does this UMC mean on this box?”  Clerk – “Umm Marine Corps?”  With a crisp thanks, both boxes were scooped up and placed neatly back on the shelf and off to the register to pay for my few items and get the hell out.  It will be damn hard for me to go back in that store (but still not as hard as it will be to get me back in Pass Bro).  I felt bad I had not taken the time to go to Presley’s but I’ve already made up for that.

Which brings us to the tipping point event.  This post ended up going waay to long so I’ll just highlight the last offending experience.  Linda actually has the one who experienced this… but I was home with a gurgling tummy so in essence we both suffered.  After some discussion, we decided to get a carry out from Double A’s – a local bar/eatery.   Linda headed off to pick up the order while I went to work on the mulch pile from hell.  After an eternity I began to worry that something had happened and stopped into the house to give her a jingle.  She was okay, almost home… but there was an event – code for there was an episode at the restaurant.  Based on the way this week has been going this wasn’t much of a surprise.  Turns out she arrived to pick up the order and was told it wasn’t ready yet.  After waiting for a significant amount of time and actually having a conversation with another lady who was also experiencing an issue with her pizza, Linda decided to check on the order “It’s been 40 minutes now, can someone go check on my order?”  They came back and admitted they failed to get the order to the kitchen and they were just now getting to it.  Nice!  After more wait she noticed the manager give the order to the cashier and tell her something.  This led Linda to expect some level of compensation for the wait.  The manager takes off and leaves the girl to inform Linda that they are sorry for the trouble and here’s five dollars to use on your next visit.  Umm she just waited over an hour for a take out order and for that they offer her $5 to use on her NEXT visit.  I appreciate the fact they did something, but a) if they think her time is that insignificant and b) the manager is too inconsiderate to apologize himself, then I question their level of customer appreciation.  The good news is there are a lot of food options in this town and a quick reshuffling of the menu drawer now has Mickey’s Pizza on top!

Whew.. I feel much better now!  Sorry for downloading on you but I am officially tired of the “we are losing money because of those evil people buying on the Internet” editorials that is becoming the shield for failing brick and mortar businesses.  I’ll gladly buy from local stores such as the Worm Ranch because they offer a level of service that isn’t available from an HTTPS interaction.  If I can get a better answer to a question from a Google submission then I might as well hit that convenient link at the top that takes me to an online store.

“I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be”

At this point you should be staring down at a pinkish rendition of your most recent meal.. if not,  then you should introduce yourself much better genres of music (for starters, take a listen to The Gracious Few which appears to be about the only thing new worth listening to at the moment).  But my intention for referencing this umm garbage was not to make you sick, but unfortunately it was cheesy enough to fit the theme of this post… and that theme is “our society should be ashamed for openly torturing our young”.

Let’s look at Exhibit A:

I’ll wait a few minutes to allow you to catch your breath and bring your pulse back to a reasonable level .. tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.  If you need to, shield your eyes so you can only see the text, we definitely understand.  What you saw just before trying to find the closest red hot poker to burn your eyes out was a scene that Linda and I came upon while we were at the University of Iowa medical facility.   Imagine if you will already being a little on edge from being there in the first place, but to turn the corner and encounter this horrific scene about stopped my heart on the spot.  So I get the whole Iowa Hawkeye pride thing (well, I actually don’t but let’s go with it for my marriage’s sake).  They obviously like their Herky mascot even though it is far inferior to my revered Chief Illiniwek symbol (it is not a mascot for you uneducated people out there), but hey, if you wanna be a chicken hawk have at it.  From a design perspective, I can totally get the concept of putting pride swelling decor in facility that gets it share of daily bad news.  But if you recall from your quick glimpse of the image above, some idiot decided to expand on that design point.  This particular walkway led to the children’s section of the hospital (we had to go through it to get to the MRI area).  Apparently some idiot had the awful idea to replace the yellow and black pride with …just a sec, gotta grab a bucket… raaaaaaaauuuuuuuuullllllllllllpppppphhhh  eeesh, that Twinkie looked and tasted better going down.. now where was I? oh right . replace it with a cl   rauullllgaggggrauuulllfffgaggg  .. sorry.. replace it with a clown outfit.  I’m sorry, but this horrific.  Imagine an innocent child already having to endure the fear and uncertainty that comes with having to be in a place like this and instead of cheerful trains or cuddly creatures like teddy bears and wolves, they are instead met with the embodiment of pure evil.  How can our society allow this cruelty to our young?

(Note, the ONLY reason this picture was taken was because I promised a coworker I would do this if they were able to find something that would help Linda’s vertigo and I always keep my promise)

Still not convinced our society has one foot in the toilet (hopefully flushed after our previous upchuck)?  Well, I give you Exhibit B (for the squeamish prepare to cover your eyes.

hit the jump to read more of this horror story

This is actually a Phoadtography shot I took as we drove through the main strip at Wisconsin Dell’s last weekend.  I was busy taking road shots when this flashed through the camera lens.  To be honest, I totally missed the shot on the first pass due to getting a chill that went all the way up my back causing me to lose grip on the shutter button.  I wasn’t entirely sure I saw it right (because no normal member of society would put that there) but my “can we go back” mantra wasn’t working on Linda at that moment so I was forced to wait for our return trip to actually get the shot.  A quick check of the viewer on the back of the camera confirmed my worst nightmare.  Since Linda obviously enjoys pressing my buttons, she made me go back the next day to get the formal shot for the blog.

I think my expression says it all.  That would be my “What the Hell have we come to” look (by the way, it also doubles as my “When is the Illinois AD going to fire our crappy football and basketball coaches.. thank god that is over).  Now let’s see what we have here.  If you have not been to the Dell’s before, trust me, it is a kid haven with all the waterparks, miniature golf and as Linda simply puts it general Dell crap – if you have been to the Canada side of the Niagara Falls you can use that as another reference.  Needless to say, kids generally love this place and it appears to be common place for people to take their kids for some fun and relaxation in the Midwest.  So what do we put in the middle of this kidfest… the epitome of their worst nightmares.  That’s right, I’m talking about a @%@$%@ clown disguised as a creepy school bus.  This means not only will they have nightmares capable of another record scream year for James P. “Sulley” Sullivan, but every time they get on the school bus they’ll experience a panic attack.   This must stop people, and it must STOP this second.

How is Whitney going to remind us how we used to be if the only things coming from children are the screams of terror?  Oh, just to prevent any stupid you should be ashamed comments, I could not care less about coke heads and I even edited that last line from what I originally had.  Although I will buy the defense she was framed by a clown.

On our way back to the car (with Linda thoroughly enjoying my frustration) she noticed some stickers on the window next to the clown ride.  I could not have placed a more fitting sign had I decided to do it myself!  Yes,  the camera came back out immediately.

There it is in a nutshell.  Where did they place the clown ride… that’s right, directly outside the Museum of Historic Torture Devices.  This was a deliberate breach of society protocols and a blatant disregard for our future (gag).  We should all be ashamed for letting this happen and as restitution I am calling for the immediate Federal ban of all clowns and clown related paraphernalia.  Ironically, this would be a vote to remove most of the current Congress.

I have to go and look for a cheap therapist now … eeesh!

What do you think, captivating brush strokes, complimentary colors and that “stand back 20 feet” appeal common in many classic paintings in art history.  Any chance you are buying that?  thought so.  Now a little background.  The first time Linda and I visited Yellowstone, we did not get the opportunity to see a single wolf while we were out there.  Part of that is due to not making it out to Lamar Valley which is where these wonderful animals tend to hang out (or rather where they are most often viewed).  This trip out we had a bold goal to leave with at least one sighting and if a miracle occurred, some photos.  On the very first morning we headed out to Lamar Valley with our friends David and Dr. Giselle.  There we were met with lots of people with spotting scopes trained on a far distance cluster of trees on the banks of the river – just below the confluence.  Thanks to a friendly lady from the UK we learned that the Druid Pack had been in a 2 day standoff with an cow elk who had sought safety in the middle of the river.  I cannot give you a good estimate of the distance that was from where we were at on the side of the road, but it was way too far for the Beast to pull in any detail at all.  Some other visitors around us were more than happy to give us a look through their more powerful scopes (quite friendly people out there by the way).  Sure enough, we could see the cow elk’s head and top of it’s back along with a couple of wolves taking random passes along the banks.  I can’t imagine how stressful this was for the participants in the standoff not having eaten in two days in a struggle of life and death.  I do not usually take sides in the natural wildlife food chains but it turns out that a group of ignorant tourists decided they have the right to.  Later in the day, these idiots decided they would walk out near the standoff and have a bite to eat while watching the event.  Well, guess what, both the elk and the wolves freaked out at this intrusion causing the end of the skirmish – the wolves abandoned the hunt and the elk made off.  Now one would say that those people saved an elk, but those of us who understand that predators have to kill to feed themselves and their cubs consider this as even more days without nourishing the pack.  While were making our final scans, a park ranger came by and informed us that this had happened and he was looking for the morons that walked out there… so we’re not the only ones upset about this (the UK lady wanted them banned from the park immediately).

So one of our goals had been met, we actually saw wolves – Yeah!   But the story does not end there.

Hit the jump to read the rest of the goodness and the explanation for the shot above !

As the day was coming to a close we started our trek back to the hotel we were staying at.  We had just passed Swan Lake – where we had taken Tundra Swan shots earlier (link here) when we noticed some movement out in the distance… in particular a black object moving at a pretty good pace across the brush.  Linda pulled over at the nearest turn off and out came the Beast and the rest of the cameras we had between us.  After relocating it in the glass, it became very apparent we were witnessing another wolf sighting and this time it was essentially the 4 of us and one other couple that had pulled off with their spotting scope.  To say it was getting too dark for the Beast is an understatement.  Luckily it was on the D7000 body so the ISO was cranked all the way up (minimally 3200 if not 6400) and the shutter speed was set as low as I was willing to go with a moving object and still give enough light for the f4 minimum.  The 80-200 just didn’t have the reach to make it out there which is a bummer since it sports an f2.8 low end.

For reference, this is what we were dealing with and this went through some major lighting enhancements to pull it out of the blackness.

The black coloring of this wolf significantly helped in the initial locating, but after a little while we noticed that this wolf was actually following another that was further to the right.  This one had the silver/gray coloring allowing it to blend nicely into the surroundings.  Eventually, this lighter wolf came into better view.

Get out your easel and painting supplies (again, the original image is very very dark and enough noise to make the World Series jealous).   These two wolves were on a mission to make it out of the valley and up into the foothills before nightfall.  I ended up asking our UK lady friend twice what pack these were and I have managed to forget (twice) what their name was.  Hell, I might as well zoom you in to see all the grainy goodness (ha).

Has a tail (check), has four legs (check), muzzle (check), got some beef on that torso (check), yes, I believe we have a wolf!  Talk about hitting gold, not only did we see wolves, we managed to spot a couple of wolves that only 6 of us noticed at the time and … and .. and .. we now have pictures (not the best quality, but pictures none the less).  I’m basically ecstatic to get some shots that you can tell is wolf but definitely left room for improvement on our next trip.

Surprisingly, we were not done yet.  On our last afternoon there, we headed back to Lamar Valley because we had heard a pack had successfully made an elk kill about a mile further up from the confluence.  We were on the other side of the park when we decided to head out there making our arrival once again late in the afternoon (actually much later as the sun was nearly down).  I screwed up and couldn’t locate the kill right away so we wasted a ton of time having to backtrack before finally spotting the kill zone.  With ISO through the roof and molasses shutter speed we came away with a couple of shots that almost look like wolves … as seen through cataracts.

For the curious, the dead elk is in the upper right (where the bird is heading).  There were a lot more wolves at this sighting (all likely needed to take down their dinner).  This shot at least has the wolf’s head out of the brush.

And for the finger painters out there, the rest of the pack…

There was absolutely no way to tell on the back of the camera’s LCD if we had made the shot or not since it looked essentially black.  Clearly we left the gallery shots out there, but our goal of seeing the wolves was definitely met and we achieved our small miracle of getting some shots in the tin.  Now that we know where they are and now that I have added a 1.4 teleconverter to the Beast (Tim the Tool Man grunts all around) I should have all the reach needed (lost an fstop, so we’ll have to get there a little earlier in the afternoon).

Hope you enjoyed this final set of the Wildlife of Yellowstone and thanks to everyone for putting up with all the photography posts this month.  Oh, and I should probably extend big thanks to Nikon for producing the D7000 with much higher ISO ranges and to Adobe for providing excellent lighting and noise reduction capabilities in Lightroom.

I am not exactly sure this was what they were talking about, but nothing says scenic more than a cow butt. The good news is I now have something to turn to when I need a chuckle.

… but there is actually more to this story that fits (almost) perfectly with this month’s theme of Yellowstone National Park wildlife. I say almost because we were technically outside of Yellowstone when the following shots of Canis Latrans were taken.

So, any guesses how these two shots are linked?

Hit the jump to see the answer!

Turns out Wile E. here was busy licking its chops conjuring up visions of hamburgers for dinner. As we drove by on the highway we noticed this lone predator standing still out in the snow. At the time we didn’t see the free range cow grazing in the ditch but a quick check of the sightline immediately answered our curiosity surrounding its motives.

Needless to say, the Beast was rounded up and pointed out the window in lightening speed. Guessing the glint of the sun off the glass caught the coyote’s attention because it pulled its eyes off of dinner and started staring directly at us. After about 5 minutes of this standoff it started putting some distance between us always under his watchful gaze.

Now normally I would feel bad about coming between a predator and its natural prey. But it just happens that I generally dislike coyotes (actually this may be a time to throw out the hate word). There are a number of reasons for this non-favorable view of these creatures. For starters they do not follow the social hierarchy of a wolf pack so their breeding rates are essentially uncontrolled. According to our good friends over at Wikipedia their litters can range up to 19 pups.. say it with me, NINETEEN. Granted they have an offspring mortality rate in the 50-70% range but as soon as they develop a medical program and realize the value of mice when it comes to lab testing instead of lunch they’ll be ringing a tiny bell for their human butler to come and sharpen their nails. Add the fact that they are direct competitors to our brothers the wolf coupled with an uncontrollable urge to scare the bu-geezus out of our pets out here in the country .. well.. best viewed with crosshairs. By the way, here is an interesting sentence called out in Wikipedia. Breeding experiments in Germany with poodles, coyotes, and later on with the resulting dog-coyote hybrids showed that, unlike wolfdogs, coydogs exhibit a decrease in fertility, significant communication problems, and an increase of genetic diseases after three generations of interbreeding. Guessing Linda will concur here, but anything involving Germany and poodles in the same sentence can’t be a good thing.

Okay, now we come to the Yellowstone part of the post. On our last morning there, we headed out through Lamar Valley in a final attempt to capture some wolves. It had snowed the night before in the higher elevations, but the lower elevation in the valley just produced a heavy frost. The reason I mention this is the coyote was easy to see against the snow background, where looking out into the browns of the valley makes it difficult spot any wildlife much less ones sporting tan and brown camouflage. Luckily, we noticed some movement a ways out in the field allowing us to track it with the Beast. With the added reach we could tell it was from the dog family. The rather large size of the specimen and the fact it was in the middle of wolf territory resulted in us concluding that it was a pair of wolves. It seemed surprising that two coyotes would be that exposed with the wolf pack kills that had occurred in the area that week (not to mention the elk another pack had taken down the night before just a few miles up the road). So there we sat happily taking shot after shot of wolves.

Later on while reviewing the shots Linda and I began to have some doubts. Their size is still at the top of the scale based on the coyotes we see out here in the woods of Illinois, but the sharpness of their muzzle and the way they were carrying their tails are more indicative of coyotes. A pretty lengthy debate followed complete with reference checks on the web along with side by side comparisons of the shots in the snow above. With great disappointment, the final decision was NOT wolves. This was a big downer since these would have definitely been the best shots of wolves we had taken while out there. Oh well, at least we didn’t come away empty handed and these were actually the only two coyotes we encountered the entire time we were in the park. It was entertaining to see how much fun these two were having hanging out in the valley … and they didn’t seem to mind the frost at all.

I wish the glimmer from the frost would have come out better in the shot – if you look close, you can kind of see some of the sparkles on the top of the weeds and brushes. Imagine the entire valley glistening in the sun. I decided to throw the following shot into the mix to demonstrate the natural camouflage of the coyote. If they were not moving at the time, we would have never found them.

Sorry to say folks, we didn’t find a single Acme box, but then again we didn’t see a single roadrunner while we were out there either. Looks like Wile E. Coyote may have solved that pesky bird problem.

Pretty cool eh?  Alas, I don’t ‘t want to tease my readers too much, this big guy isn’t real – sorry.  Well, it is not a live bear per-se, but it is a real statue we came upon while cruising through and cruising through Cody Wyoming on our way back from Yellowstone.  Now you may be thinking there needs to be some  structure cleanup in the previous sentence but not the case.  I immediately spotted this perfect Phoadtography (link here) opportunity at least two blocks away.  With a polite request to the driver to simply stop speeding for a minute, I risked life and limb to climb into the backseat and find the camera.  A fast run through the Nikon menu system to get the settings right for the proper “on the move” exposure, an acrobatic move to get the glass on target, a strategic snap of the shutter button and presto a perfect Phoadtography shot to add to the collection.  Yes, that would have been the story had someone actually acted upon my request to slow down.  My hopes were crushed as the grizzly quickly became obscured by light poles and traffic signs.  One last hope… “Can we go back?  Can we go back? Can we go back? Can we go back? Can we go b… thank you!!! (annoyance tends to works 62.5% of the time – the other times she secretly unlocks my door and takes a hard left).   As a result, we should all thank Linda for looping back around so I could get the shot.

Which is all a long drawn out lead into the feature topic of this post.  Please extend a big welcome to the top of the Yellowstone National Park food chain Ursus Arctos Horribilis. The Ursa Major if you will of our National Park system.  Of course, I am talking about the Grizzly Bear.

Having struggled to get good shots of the black bear in the previous set, it was a relief to see that these came out a lot better.  Linda and I were on our way back from taking photographs of the Yellowstone Canyon Falls when some new arrivals informed us there was a Grizzly sighting up the road from where we parked.  This was candy to my ears so we quickened our pace back to the car.  Normally, this kind of news would have us single focused, but all of a sudden a big fat raven decided to dive bomb into the parking lot (think WKRP turkey episode).  This required a few shots as historical evidence that Ravens should consider developing a Weight Watchers program (see last set of pictures here).  Once that was done we headed off to validate the sighting… sure enough, there it was foraging for food in the fresh snow.  The following shot is one of my favorites with the snow on the nose.

Hit the jump to see some more pictures of the Yellowstone Grizzly

There were two other people taking pictures when we got there but they were at a disadvantage when it came to the zoom power we were packing.  I had to hold back a chuckle when a young couple leaped out of their car and started snapping pictures with their iPhone – “see that splotch, the one next to that other splotch and just below that big smear.. that’s a grizzly!”  I am guessing with the snow starting to settle into the area, this particular bear was looking to finish out its pre-hibernation binging.  Our friends over at Wiki indicate that a Grizzly can gorge up to 400 additional pounds before entering their dens – something I didn’t know before perusing the Wiki site, they den above 5900′ on northern mountain faces.

From the numerous wolf reading over the years I am very familiar with the Grizzlies devious practice of simply stealing their kills.  Wolves will generally give up the fight pretty quick choosing another hunt over inevitable injury.  This outlook changes dramatically when the grizzly comes into danger distance of their den(s) if their cubs are still being reared.  In this case the pack will stand their ground.  If that wasn’t bully enough for you, the thug in the woods will let the squirrel do its gathering.  Once the squirrel has done all the work to collect the Whitebark Pine Nut, this big furball will simply confiscate it.  This must be why those squirrels are so pissed out there (see link here).

There are times when I finish processing an image, and something other than what I focused on ends up surprising me.  The above picture is case in point.  I was busy working the image trying to find the most pleasing composition – someday I’ll get better vision in the field.  After finalizing the processing I looked over to the left and noticed how cool the tree turned out with the light pattern across the deep grooves of the bark.  I liked it so much I went back and worked another shot taken of the same area… and of course this time I gave more attention to the cool pine tree.

So what do you think?  I admit I have a thing for trees (and rocks) and working on a super secret book that will feature them (lips are sealed on that project for awhile).

Hope you enjoyed the shots of the big bad boy in the park.  Oh, forgot to mention – if you need to distinguish the difference between the black bear and the grizzly, just look to the back shoulders if there is a hump there consider yourself in deep trouble unless you have some bear spray and someone in your party you can kneecap as you go running past.  If it doesn’t, you are probably looking at a black bear and those tend to be a little more docile unless the cubs are out and about or they notice your chocolate covered banana.