Cohabitation
Posted March 6th, 2008 in [hide]
“It’s god-awful country,” the officer said, recommending that I avoid US 287 across Wyoming from Rawlins to Moran Junction. He was right. I had flown to Connecticut, where I grew up, bought a used car, and was driving it home to California; a member of the local highway patrol wanted to make sure my [paper] temporary plate was legitimate. After our ad hoc meeting, I confirmed that the road to Grand Teton is indeed long, sun parched and wind swept high desert.
Yellowstone itself is an oasis, rising up on the back of the Rocky Mountains to pull moisture out of the air, and teeming with life because of it. Sitting on a now-protected crest of the continental divide, the park is known the world over for its wildlife, although the photo doesn’t show any endangered species. In the surrounding hills and meadows live bison, elk, bighorn sheep, black and grizzly bears, eagles, and more.
These unlikely roommates were found along the trail to Avalanche Peak, near the east entrance. Signs at the trailhead warned of bear encounters in the back country, which turned out not to be an issue. While the trail was scenic - beginning in a dense evergreen forest and ascending - there were no wild animals apart from these two, and surprisingly few people.
Unfortunately for your correspondent, there was a job waiting in San Francisco and thousands of miles left to drive; this was to be a brief visit, spanning only two days.
I love the picture with the butterfly. I have trouble with taking photos like that. Usually my images end up with bad focus or they get blurry. Do you have any tips maybe?
Nice timing Forrest to capture a Butterfly + Bee in the same photo
Emil there are some good tips at http://www.beautifulbugs.com/beautifulbugs/howto.htm
The first one is incredible. I reaally like the second one too, but the color in #1 is just fantastic. That flower is like the sunshine!
I’d like to know how you can take photos that close to animals and the like without having them buzz or fly away. I’d figure they’d be scared before you could get a nice shot off quick enough.
@James - they always take off sooner or later, but you’d be surprised how long that can take sometimes. This is a prime example; it left a few seconds later, but clearly isn’t afraid of humans.
Part of it is using a long telephoto lens - 480 mm in both cases. The five feet it needs to focus puts me a world away for the little critters. It makes a person a little more inconspicuous. And there’s been some luck with the timing; I was hiking with my camera on my back for this one, and was using it when I got a chance to shoot the other. Also, when you see something with potential, being still can get a lot of types of wildlife to ignore you after some time.
@Emil - One thing that can help if you’re having trouble getting focus quickly enough is to stop the lens down. This will at least make the zone of focus deeper / less narrow, so a butterfly has a better chance of being inside of it. The trade-off is that it chokes off a lot of the light that would have hit the film or sensor, so you need either really fast film / a high ISO, or a flash. The photo above was f/13 and ISO 400.
@Neerav & @John - Thanks!
that’s mad cool. i like how you share the story behind each pic!
From one photographer to another I’d love to have pictures like that!
These are manifestations of Eden. Such rich and vibrant colors telling the story of life.