Hi everyone-

Well the snow has begun to fall, albeit light at this point. We have about an inch of new snow on the ground and it is continuing at a pretty light rate. The wind is also picking up a bit.

So I'm not sure what we'll actually get out of this one. But for those of you to the north and east of us, good luck...lol

In today's image I shot this bison coming up over a hill from the Yellowstone River in Hayden Valley, Yellowstone National Park.

It was shot the morning after an October snowstorm moved through the area. It was very cold and pretty windy.

The wind actually worked out nice for shooting a series of "environmental portraits" of the bison crossing the area. That combined with the sun very low on the sky made it as though I set up lighting and had fans in place. Heck even the bison cooperated.

Have a great day!!

Hi everyone-

Well its going to snow again! The weather man is saying that starting tonight we can expect another 4 to 8 inches of snow.

As a matter of fact in North Eastern PA and NJ they are saying that the conditions will create a snowicaine with lots of snow and very strong winds.

While normally I am all for it this may have some effects on upcoming travel plans. So much so that my mom, dad, sister and nephew have changed their travel plans to leave a day early just to make sure they get out.

So today I have mixed emotions. I love the winter and snow, I don't want to miss our flights, I am looking forward to better weather, I am going to miss playing in the snow... Oh well there will be more...lol

Here is a image from Yellowstone highlighting the beauty of the snow and winter, just to remind you that it's not all bad!!

Hi everyone-

As I mentioned yesterday I enjoy watching the Trumpeter Swans while I am in Yellowstone National Park or Grand Teton National Park.

They are graceful and peaceful and to me very calming and relaxing to watch.

In today's image I tried to create a feeling of looking back in time to a more peaceful and leisurely era. At a time in my life and I'm sure for many others where it seems like we never have a chance to take a break, this is just what I need.

Not often enough do I take the time to escape reality and get away for a few hours in nature. More times than not sitting here at the computer working on the images is about as close as I get to spending any real time with nature unless I am on a trip.

I think that I am going to change that this spring. Even if its just for an hour here or there I think it just might make all of the hustle and bustle of my everyday reality a little easier to take.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today's image was shot in the Swan Lake Flats area of Yellowstone National Park this past fall.

I had left the park for a few days but decided to come back and spend a little more time when word of an impending snow storm began to spread.

I lucked out a bit and the park received a fair amount of snow.

As the storms began to clear out I headed to Swan Lake Flats in hopes of seeing wolves but that didn't really pan out. I did get to watch the beautiful landscape of the area begin to wake up from the snow.

This was only a momentary laps in the storm as it turns out and later in the day we received a lot more snow.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Here is a quick post of an image that I shot this past October just outside of Gardiner Montana. The image was shot around 10pm.

Of course the camera was on a tripod and the exposure was somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds if I remember correctly.

The light on the clouds and mountains comes from two sources. The main source was a nearly full moon. The second was light from buildings along highway 89 north of Gardiner.

I have never had a camera before the D700 that shot high enough quality low light images to even consider doing this type of photography. Next summer and fall this will be something that I play around with when I am back out in Wyoming and Montana where there is a tad less unnatural light to deal with.

Heading to Nashville today for the PPA ImagingUSA conference and the DWF convention. I am really excited about some of the classes that I will be attending.

But I am also very excited to be working with Bryan Allen and Ted Van Der Linden on a photo project while we are there. We are going to be shooting something pretty cool at the DWF and the BB King Blues Club. I am not to sure what I can talk about and what I can't so that's it for now!!!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today's post is somewhat of a follow up to yesterday's. This image is an example of a situation where I would previously never have gotten a shot.

I was in Yellowstone National Park on Mount Washburn watching the Arnica Fire's massive thermal column. While I was at the turn out a man pulled in on a motorcycle. I looked over and was like wow, I have got to take a photograph of this guy.

Had I not gotten over my phobia of taking images of strangers I would never have walked up to this guy. But without hesitation I approached him and struck up a conversation.

In a matter of second I found out that this guy was traveling around the area by himself on his Harley. I also found out that he lived about 45 miles from me back home in Pennsylvania.

On a side note I find it amazing the amount of people that I have met while in the National Parks that live very close to me. Several years back we hiked a trail in Glacier with a couple who back home in York walked by our house every evening but we had never met.

Situations like that have happened over and over. Its funny but if you never "talk to strangers" you would never know. Last year I met a guy who was the flagger at a construction site in Yellowstone. Turns out he'd from Hanover, PA less than 30 miles from my house.

Anyway. This guy had such a unique look and was very nice. We talked for several minutes, I took several photographs and then he was on his way wanting to get to his destination before dark.

I was pretty happy with the image having not planned it and only having a minute to pull it off. The sun had just set so I put the sunset to my back and used the sky as a giant soft box to light him. He never even got off his bike.

A few years ago this would have been someone that I never would have approached. And a great opportunity missed.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

We'll i have finally returned home.It was a LONG 30 hour drive over 2 days but I am glad I did it and got home ahead of schedule! I was very excited to see my girls and I think they were excited to see me too...lol

I slept in with Cree yesterday and then spent the rest of the day just hanging out with her and Tonya. It was a great day.

Now starts the unpacking and photo editing. Good thing I am still off from work so I have a lot of time to start catching up.

While I was in Yellowstone I shot a lot of images of the Arnica Fire. On my first night in the park I decided to try something that I had not done before. So I set up the camera and shot a time laps sequence of the fire from the Alum Creek area of Hayden Valley.

I shot 100 images 1 second apart. The video below is a 16 second clip made up of those 100 images. This is something I think I want to play around with a bit more.



Today's images were also both shot in the Hayden Valley. I noticed that both times snow and cold temperatures were predicted the buffalo came from everywhere and gathered on the valley floor.

Since I don't think they were given a forecast I think there is something that they can sense that we can't. I'm not a biologist so I can't explain it or back it up with anything other than my observations.

With the cold temperatures that descended on the park last week slow moving and standing water began to freeze. In the first image two buffalo make their way across the frozen marshy water. Not only did they have to deal with the freezing water but the very muddy ground beneath it. Many of the buffalo struggled to get through.



As I was shooting the buffalo images the sun began to set and the wind was picking up and blowing pretty good. Out of the corner of my I I noticed several buffalo coming over a hill to my right. It was a perfect spot to shoot them. The light was right, the wind was blowing and they stopped to pose like we had worked it all out ahead of time.

After posing for a second they seemed to get a bit too interested in me and starting heading my way, in a bit of a hurry. That necessitated a hasty retreat behind the truck and then around the truck as they passed by and crossed the road.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

So If you have been checking in I am sure your pretty surprised that there is a new post today. Well, I have actually had a bit of time along with a reliable internet connection so I thought I better get some new images up.

I have arrived in Choteau, Montana and am spending a few days here visiting with my mom and family. It's been a bit nicer here weather wise than it was in Yellowstone but I think thats about to change. Sounds like very cold temps and snow will be arriving shortly.

So onto the images....

The first two are f the Arnica Fire in Yellowstone National Park. During my first week in the park this fore was the dominate park feature. It was putting off a huge amount of smoke, closing roads and generally screwing up travel and sleeping arrangements. As well the wild life viewing wasn't that great because it was warm and most of the animals hadn't gotten the memo that it was fall.

So I shot a lot of images of the fire. The first one was shot at night from the West Thumb area. This was the last time I was able to travel the road before it was closed for the rest of the week. This image shows the width of the fire in this area.



The next image was shot at the Fishing Bridge junction. I thought it was interesting/funny because of the message on the sign.



I have a ton of images of the fire, some of which I will post here late and also in a gallery that I will post a link to here.

So I also shot some other subjects in the park between figuring out how to get around detours and smoke. Because the road was closed between Norris and Madison I stayed on the east side of the park for the most part. One of the places I spent a lot of time was on Mount Washburn. There was a lot of Elk activity in the high mountain meadows. The bull in the image below was on the move and lookin' for love on the this morning.



Another area that I spent a lot of time was Canyon. Many hours were spent walking and waiting in the meadows in this area looking for the Great Gray Owls. Well it paid off as I was able to photograph one of three that I saw. I also recorded some of the calls the owl was making. I will post that audio later once I get home and figure out the best way to do that. The other two owls I saw within second of each other. One flew away and the other gave us every opportunity to shoot it but a comedy of errors commenced once the ranger asked us to move our vehicles 3 more inches off the road. Till the logs were run over, the tripods hit, the vehicles moved and cameras found the bird said these guys are idiots I'm out of here and off he flew into the night.

This owl was shot within minutes of the first and only time I saw him at this particular location. He was very skittish and kept his distance. I think it had a lot to do with the large amount of photographers looking through the woods over the previous few days.



Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Greetings from Jackson, WY and Grad Teton National Park! I would like to apologize for the lack of content lately, I have had little or no access to the internet over the last few days.

One of the major reasons for that was a perfect storm of events and conditions which left me confined to a small portion of Yellowstone. I could have gotten to my other destinations but it would have involved hundreds of miles of driving.

Today's images highlight one of the major reasons I was unable to travel through the park. The Arnica fire created a bit of havoc in the park. Started by lightning back on September 13th and really coming to life on the 23rd this fire grew quite large and effected many park services and roads.

This prevented me from leaving the park on my scheduled day and heading into Jackson Hole WY. I will talk more about this fire in future posts.

These images were shot in the evening of the day when the fire really blew up. It was the start to very smokey and very dramatic conditions. More on this fire later...

Don't forget to check out the Skywatch Blog and see great skies from around the world.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Hope you all had a great week.

Today starts my normal 4 days off from the fire department and boy am I happy they are here. There is a ton of stuff to get done for the show next week as well as stuff around the house. But The best part of this weekend is I am off the same days as Tonya so we get a whole weekend together. It will be great to have some good family time with no real place to go!

That doesn't happen that often.

So today's image is another installment of the Bison Art series that I started earlier in the week. This image was shot last fall in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley. One of the most beautiful places in the park and the country in my opinion.

The image was initially shot at a slow shutter speed while panning with the running buffalo.

Have a great weekend!!

Oh and don't forget the Yorkfest Arts Festival in downtown York, PA next weekend. (29,30 AUG) I hope to see you there!

Hi everyone-

Today's image also started out as a photograph and was then 'painted' in Photoshop.

I decided to try a tighter crop on part of the bison's head. It seems to have turned out pretty good.

This one was a bit tougher to create though because of the amount of dark detail. It was hard to see what had been painted and what was not. So in the end what I thought would be a quicker job ended up taking just as long as the other images had.

***ON ANOTHER NOTE***

For those of you close by the York, PA area next weekend August 29th and 30th I will be displaying and selling my work at the Yorkfest Arts Festival along the Codorus Creek in downtown York. I would love to see you stop by and say hi!!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Just a quick post this morning as I have to get on the road for work today.

I am continuing to experiment with this painting technique that I have come up with. I have a few more in the works so your feedback on what you think would be great.

I hope you have a great day and if you're in our area find some water to cool down in or stay inside. I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to do either but hopefully we don't have many calls today.

Have a great day!!

HI everyone-

Hope you all had a great weekend! I spent much of mine preparing files for printing and framing for the upcoming Yorkfest Arts Festival in just under two weeks. There is a ton to get ready, but it is always fun.

While I was going through some files I came across a few bison images that I liked but were missing something as straight photographs. So I set out to change them up a bit. I ended up "painting" them in photoshop and went from there.

I would love to hear what you think of the finished product!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone,

This image was shot back in May in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. For those of you familiar with the park, it was directly across the road from the Trout Lake parking area/trail head.

I don't have first hand knowledge of the events that lead to the injury of the mother and the birth of the calf. I was told, however that wolves had made an attack on the mother prior to giving birth. I was also told that at the time these images were taken the calf was just over a day old.

The mother had injuries to both sides, her neck and rump area. Judging by the injuries she must have put up a good fight.To protect her calf she had it tucked up against the river behind it. The water was very high and running quite fast. I am sure none of the parks animals would have attempted to cross her nor would they have made it.

So it was a good choice for a location. She then only had to watch three sides. The last I heard or read these two were still alive. I would think that as long as they were in this area they were doing OK.

I just drove past this spot last week and they were gone. Obviously they couldn't stay there forever/ But this is wolf country so hopefully they were able to avoid being taken down once they ventured away from this spot.

I hope that you have a great weekend and 4Th of July holiday. Have fun and be safe!

Thanks for checking out the blog, have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Wow what an exciting day yesterday was here in Choteau, MT. This is a normally quiet town with a population of somewhere over 1,000 people.

Well just after noon 15 agencies worth of Law Enforcement swooped into town conducting simultaneous raids on a drug operation they had been investigating for several years.

They conducted raids in two towns and the county. Interestingly one of the arrests happen to take place less than a block from our house. One of the suspects happened to be driving down main street when they law caught up with him. Out of an unmarked pickup jumped two officers, guns drawn. They quickly took him into custody and disappeared.

All the while a DHS helicopter with men hanging out the sides with automatic weapons hovered overhead.

The raids lasted about 2 hours. The helicopter circled overhead and occasionally seemed to swoop in low to block roads or escape routes for suspects.

At one point one of the helicopters took a path over our house and was just above the trees max height was 30-40 feet over the house. We were outside and had to quickly retreat into the house to avoid the debris what was blowing all over. The kids strollers were outside and were picked up and blown to the neighbors yard. Tree branches were blown down and dust was every where.

This caused quite a stir in this normally quite town. Here are a few pics of when they were hovering over the house at a bit higher altitude.







So I did have a regular post set up for today. But I thought the action deserved to be posted right away. I had about 5 shots of a Grizzly that I had shot in Yellowstone ready. I am going to save most of them for another day but I still wanted to share one today.

This guy was about a 1/4 mile from where I shot the wolf images and taken about 15 minutes later. He had just emerged from the river and was heading up into the hills for the day.



Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

A very quick update today... I finally got to shoot the Great Grey at Phantom Lake today. I have been looking for this owl since May and on my last day, last pass by the lake it was there.

Here is a quick shot from this morning.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today is day two for us in Yellowstone. The weather is perfect. Today it is only to be about 70. But it is very sunny and very comfortable. Yesterday we made our way into the park from Cody via the east entrance. Along the way we saw a fox, some bighorn sheep, two moose, elk and lots of bison.

Today's image was shot just east of the Blacktail Ponds area, very near the Lava Creek picnic area. I had seen three bulls in this general area a few weeks ago but a bit further east. As we traveled west I didn't think we were going to see them. But they were in their normal position, very near the road about 1/2 mile west of the ponds.

This big guy, one of the bigger ones I have seen this year in the park is tagged #10. I think that if I remember correct # 10 spent some time in Mammoth last fall.

Don't forget to check out the Skywatch blog today and tomorrow by clicking here: SKYWATCH

I know there is not a lot of sky in this image however it is pretty representative of the conditions we have had, severely clear. I am hoping to catch some great sunrises and sunsets on this trip to help with future Skywatch posts. Hopefully we'll get some weather moving in and some interesting clouds along the way.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As many of you know I was recently in Yellowstone for a few days. It was a quick trip but proved to be one of the better ones lately for action.

The images that I am posting today are a bit graphic so if your not down with that then you should probably move on. That being said, the images also depict the life and death struggle that goes on in Yellowstone every day.

One of the coolest parts of the park is that you really never know what is going to happen, when or where. You can increase your chances of getting good shots by learning about the animals and their habits, spending time in the park and by talking to other photographers, park visitors and guests. But sometimes you just need a little luck.

On the day that these images were shot I had a little of both going for me but mostly luck. I was in the right place at the right time and it payed off.

I had headed out to the Lamar Valley shortly before sunrise after getting up at 0400. There were plenty of other people around and I figured this was probably a better place than most to potentially see something play out.

Now my thoughts were with two animals, wolves and grizzlies. They usually seem to be the ones who can create drama where ever they go.

After driving around for a while I came upon a group of people pulled over, just by their actions I knew something was happening. They were rushing around, setting up cameras, and pointing.

Then I saw it. A large female elk (cow) was on her back and kicking wildly into the air. That could mean only one thing, she was fighting for her life. I quickly ditched the truck and made my way over to where the people where. I looked down and there was the former Slough pack alpha male wolf with the elk. He had single handily taken her down and was now finishing off the job. And he wasn't 75 yards from us.

I quickly shot a series of images and looked around for other wolves. But it was just him. Several bystanders mentioned up to two other wolves that might not have crossed the road earlier in the take down. But they were no where to be seen.

The wolf was now dragging the elk down over the hill. This took both out of everyone's view. Bystanders started to file away, either to continue their travels through the park or to look for a better vantage point.







At this moment I realized I could not find my wallet and set out retracing my steps to locate it. After looking for about 5 min thought it may have come out in my sleeping bag while I was changing. Sure enough in the back of my truck I found it in the bag.

So while I was kneeling on the tailgate of my truck I though now would be a good time to change out the batteries in my camera. As I was doing this I noticed something moving to my right. By this time I was completely alone along the road. Everyone else had moved on.

When I looked up there was the the black wolf heading in my direction and in its mouth was the fetus of the elk it had just taken down. I quickly re assembled the camera and began shooting hand held kneeling on my tailgate. Not the best shooting conditions but I had no time to do anything but that.

My heart was racing and I was really hoping that I was catching the images and that they would be good enough to share. Luckily the light had not changed to much and the settings were pretty close to what was needed and it all worked out.

The following images were shot with in the 30 second it took for the wolf to pass by. It was one of those amazing Yellowstone moments that could happen anywhere in the park at any time.

I hope you enjoy them, have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I spent most of yesterday sorting images, deleting bad ones, processing the good ones etc., from my trip west.

Today I thought I would post some of my favorite landscape shots from the trip to Yellowstone. I hope you enjoy them!

Have a great day!

Yellowstone Lake...


Lamar Valley, Yellowstone...


This range is the Crazy Mountains just north of Livingston, MT...


Same image just processed differently...


I honestly don't remember where this image was shot...