Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
When I took Ellie to the dog park this evening she plopped over on her back in the green grass and wiggled happily. She does this frequently and it always reminds me of this bison bull that I met along the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone. Here he shakes off a cloud of dirt after bathing in a wallow.
Honest and heartfelt, passionate and powerful. Hopeful. Inspiring.
Water drops coat the back of a sooty grouse on a rainy afternoon, but it has shaken most of the water from its head. I wish Canon would build teleconverters into all of its telephoto lenses like they did with their 200-400mm lens, as it would be very helpful on days like this. I was photographing multiple grouse who were moving all around me as I sat on the trail, sometimes walking right up to me as they fed, but I was also keeping my eye on a marmot that was feeding nearby. I would have preferred to switch my teleconverter in and out as my subjects moved about, but given the heavy rain I was hesitant to take the lens off the camera.
A quick edit of an old picture to mark a historic day in my country. This was my first visit to Storm Point in Yellowstone and the trail lived up to its name. A brief but violent thunderstorm rolled through before yielding to the sun and an intense rainbow.
I had been watching this pika for a while and decided to use the rocks of the talus field near me to blur the bottom of the frame and make it seem almost as though the pika was emerging from the clouds. Unfortunately I only had a moment to attempt the shot, trying to get my tripod positioned in the jumbled rock field at just the right height while sitting uncomfortably on the rocks, and I ended up blurring its ears a little more than I would like.
Nevertheless one of my favorite pictures of one of my favorite creatures.
It rains fairly often during winter here in the Pacific Northwest but it is often a gentle, misty rain and hard to convey in images. On this January afternoon, however, great big buckets of rain started pouring from the sky so I took the opportunity to show how predators like this egret, if they want to eat, have to hunt no matter the weather. If you’re wondering how the egret fared under such conditions, this happened about 10 minutes later.
I was playing off the shutter speed (to freeze the rain) with the depth of field (to keep as much rain in focus as possible), but I wish I could have had more depth of field. Hopefully it still conveys a sense of how hard it was raining.
… so I can overlook the fact that there are two cats on the kitchen counter. This little window nook provides an excellent view of the squirrels that run up and down the fence to move between the front yard and back. Boo and Trixie are genuinely becoming friends, this morning as I was getting ready for work they were happily chasing each other from bedroom to bedroom.
Sam, on the other hand, is very much a work in progress.
She’s a quick learner.
Don’t worry Trixie, Boo didn’t exactly get it right his first time either.
I love the cracked bark of old trees, it almost looks like there is another tree inside trying to burst forth. I love the texture and colors of a tree that first sprang from the earth long before I was born and will likely be around long after I’m gone. And I love how when you look closer you see the tiny spider webs and the delicate lichen and realize there are little worlds existing within this small section of this giant tree, which is just one tree in a large forest circling a massive volcano, and you feel lucky to just be standing there, a part of one little story next to a tree that could tell thousands.
Boolie 