Earlier this year my buddy Jim was talking about going on a flight to get areal video of where the bears were. I told him that I would pay half to go with because I wanted to get some areal photos of the Tetons. Jim’s brother wanted Jim to get some areal photos or video of a ice face he was planning on climbing next winter with a group. Jim’s brother paid for the whole thing and Jim took me up with him. It was an old Cessna that smelled like a auto repair shop. We hopped in and Mike, the pilot, fired up the engine and we were off in a flash. We had blue skies, calm winds overhead and we were thinking it would be a great day for a flight. We had to go about 40 miles east up the Gros Ventre wilderness to The Wind River Range where the ice climb is on a mountain called Square Top. It was a pretty flight until it wasn’t.

It started to snow just as we approached the mountain. When Jim opened the window to get video I could not breathe for a few seconds after being blasted by the cold, snowy air. It was like when you walk outside on a brisk winter morning and the wind steals your breath for a few seconds. It was a cold, cold blast. I caught my breath and started snapping shots. Jim got his video and I took some photos through the window and a few while holding my camera out the window. It was too cramped to look through the viewfinder so most didn’t turn out so well.

I would like to go on some more flights but next time either take the doors off the plane or sit up front. The back seat is less than ideal for photographing. It was fun seeing the area from the air that I have tens of thousands of miles driving around but my photos did not turn out the best. I cannot wait till it warms up and I can do it again!

Pull leaver, push seat forward. Roll black Osprey Backpack between craves of front and rear seat. Fold yellow Thermarest NeoAir mattress over Osprey Backpack. Lay out sleeping bag. Enter through side door butt first. Remove shoes. Get into cannon ball position bringing in feet. Reach out, grab shoes and smack on rear tire removing soils before brining them into the car for the night…

It sure doesn’t feel like its been six months since I last slept in my car. Everything still seems natural from the over one-hundred days I slept in my car last summer. There were other options for the night but I was really looking forward to spending the night in my car. That sounds strange but there is a reason for everything.

Today I woke up at the normal time, 7:00, planning to call in sick for work. I told my boss I had the shits. Who questions that? This is the first time I have ever called in sick without being deathly ill but, it was necessary. Last week I told my boss that I needed Thursday off to move. Since I was working five days a week and all the other photographers who normally only work four days were getting bumped down to three, I didn’t think he would have a problem dropping me down to four since he was in the middle of making the schedule anyways. Apparently he didn’t like that idea so I was forced to call in sick. There was a little tension the day before and I told him that he could give me the day off or I was going to call in sick. I had to sort all my stuff to go to three different locations. There is the stuff I am keeping in my storage unit, the stuff that goes back to and will stay in Wisconsin and the stuff that is going to Nicaragua for a month with me. Its not like I just could throw it in a bin and store it. It would be bad if something got into the wrong pile and I didn’t have it when I needed it. Especially because it all is going to be thousands of miles apart. On top of packing I had to clean my apartment which wound up taking till about 3:30 when all was said and done.

As soon as I hit the main highway after finishing the move, an unbelievable happiness came over me. It is a phenomenal feeling that I normally get when I realize I have complete freedom to go wherever I want, sleep wherever I want, do whatever I want and not know where I am going to wind up that night. There is a sense of adventure. Adventure of the unknown. The spots I normally sleep are all still burred in snow so I had to try a new spot by Slide Lake. On the way there the clouds were looking good so I found a spot to photograph sunset. It was still a hour away but I didn’t have anything else to do so I waited. I would never have got to see it had I had a place in town or even if I had a place out here. Doubt I would’ve gone outside to photograph it. But tonight, under these amazing circumstances, I did. It was incredible. Normally a sunsets best light only lasts for about a minute. Tonight it lasted over fifteen. I am forced to stay outdoors shooting until poor lighting forces me to stop. Besides 7 is too early to call in a night when sleeping in a car.  Many more photo opportunities present themselves when I am homeless simply because I put myself in more positions to capture them.  Living out of the car is a great way to force yourself to focus on photography.  I love it!

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Probably the best part about having seasonal jobs is the vacation time between seasons. There are not too many jobs out there where you get four months vacation a year. Starting April 7^th I will have off for two months until mid June when I return to the Tetons to be a wildlife safari guide. Two months sounds like it is going to be a pretty long vacation but it sure doesn’t seem like it’s going to be all that long. When thinking about all that I want to accomplish in those two months I will have to cut some things out for lack of time.

As of right now I am going to visit family and friends in Wisconsin for two weeks. Then fly out to Nicaragua for a month where I might try and get over to Cuba before it is legal for Americans to go there… As far as you all know, I am not going there. It would be unfortunate to have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines or go to jail for 7 years. I tried doing some research on how to get there but it is pretty much impossible to set it up from the US because it is blocked by the government. I will have to figure things out once I get there. Cuba is just so alluring because it is illegal and once the borders are opened to US citizens it will be quickly Americanized. Another plan I had was go to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica for a week and do some hiking, camping and photography. It is one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet. Great place for wildlife photography and landscapes along the Pacific cost. While I am in Nicaragua I will be spending some time in Esteli again and hopefully Managua and La Paz. I haven’t talked to my buddy Mike about it yet but hopefully it works out.

My buddy John bought a one way ticket to Nicaragua a few weeks back so it will be fun hanging out with him. I think we are going to try and get to the Corn Islands off the Caribbean cost and maybe rent a beach house for a week if it works out. Whatever the case, I just cannot wait to get down there and de-thaw after this winter. I am ready for summer and the warm weather it brings.

Today was the first day volunteering at the Teton Raptor Center. As most of you know, I really like birds. I worked for a raptor breeder in Iowa last summer and plan on getting my falconry license eventually. It is difficult though with all the moving around I do. Fortunately I will be here in Jackson for quite a while and there is a raptor rehabilitation center a few miles away that I will now be volunteering with. Mostly the duties will be feeding the birds but there will also be opportunities to do presentation and educational talks which I am pretty interested in. Now working with the breeder you would think I would have plenty of experience handling hawks but that is not the case. It was breeding season and the birds were to be left alone. Here, at Teton Raptor Center, I will be able to handle the birds a lot because this place wants us to weigh the birds daily to keep their weight at a healthy level. Today I got to handle a Great Horned Owl and a Red Tailed Hawk. Both pretty cool animals. It didn’t take long to weigh and feed all the animals since there is only about 8 or so including a bald and golden eagle.

I didn’t really have anything else to do today so I had them teach me how to tie the falconers knot and clean the chambers (hawk room). One of them is working on putting together a skeleton of a Osprey so I helped her remove flesh off the bones for a while. It is a pretty tedious project she has going. It will be fun for people to see when she is done.

It should be a good experience volunteering out there. It will be great learning more about hawks so that some day I can get my own for hunting. My plan here is to rack up a bunch of hours so I can handle the eagles. That will be awesome.

Last week my buddy John who I traveled Central America with, and who I will be traveling again with soon, sent me a message on facebook telling me to check out his banner photo. It was a photo from Yosemite, a shot of Yosemite valley. I looked at it and wasn’t all that impressed with it and actually kinda wondered why he used it as his banner photo when there are so many other great photos out there of the same spot. I told him it was a nice shot and left it at that.  I was really thinking it was too dark, there is no contrast in the sky, and there is too much water.  He responded, telling me it was one of my shots and I needed to protect my images better on Smugmug. Anyway it made me go through my Yosemite album from 2010 along with a few others removing bad photos that I once thought were great shots. I was surprised how many bad shots there were. I have become a much better photographer since then and most of what I have learned is from talking with other photographers and trial and error. Here is what I have learned makes for good photography.

SHOOT IN RAW

Shooting in RAW format is the single most important change I have made. RAW format saves a lot more data, 25mb of data vs 8mb. This means that more can be done with the photo in the post processing areas such as color correction. When shooing in JPEG it is difficult to bring out the colors and make the image look as seen in real life. All professionals from wedding photographers to wildlife photographers shoot in raw. It makes life much easier.

PAY ATTENTION TO SURROUNDINGS

Even at the beginning of the summer I would get excited about everything I saw and would try to get as tight of shot as I could. I wanted the close up shot where you could see a flee on the bears nose if it was there. Now I still like to shoot some tight shots but I prefer to get more of the surroundings. Brings out more emotion in the images. There are millions of close up shots of wildlife but there are very few shots where you feel like the landscape is the main focus with an animal in it as a bonus. Tom Mangelsen represents this the best.

I was planning on getting a 500mm lens this spring but instead I think I am going to get a arsenal of smaller, high quality lenses.

KNOW THE CAMERA

Two years ago I really did not know much about the camera and didn’t take the time to learn about it. I was happy with the shots I was getting and didn’t take the time to improve. There was pretty much just one setting I used and most things were on auto, like ISO, a big No-No. I have much more control of the image now so there is less post processing needed. If I want to blur the background of a close up on a bears face, I can shoot for that. If I want everything in focus on a landscape shot, I can do that to. I don’t leave it up to the camera and hope to get lucky. All manual baby!

BETTER EQUIPTMENT

Knowing the camera, and getting lucky is 75% of the battle. You also have to have good equipment. Good glass is key and very pricy. I have made some pretty hefty investments in camera gear in the last year and another big investment is in the works. It well worth the price. Cheap lenses do not pull in enough light, are slow, and do not get the ultra sharp image desired. Sure you can get lucky once and a while but more times than not you’re going to get frustrated. I know I did for the first two months here in Jackson. I wound up getting a job to pay for a 100-400L series lens from Canon. It was a great investment.

GETTING LUCKY

Wildlife photography is about knowing your gear, being prepared, putting in your time in hopes to get lucky. To get that one in 10,000 shot that will sell or at least look good on your wall. When shooting wildlife you have to work with what is presented to you. Lighting, surrounding, distance, weather, animal cooperation, and your preparedness all have to work with you to get that one shot. If one thing is out of whack it could, and usually does, ruin your whole image.

Getting lucky involves putting in the time, and practice. I still mess things up all the time. I messed up the Northern Lights the other night. They were out of focus because my widest angel lens in not the best quality so Auto Focus at night doesn’t work and Manual Focus at night in nearly impossible. A big part of getting good images is going where what your looking to capture is the densest. If you want to capture an image of a grizzly catching fish your going to go to Alaska. If you want an amazing shot of the sandhill crane migration, your going to go to somewhere along their main migration route. It just makes sense. You have to put yourself in the best place possible to get the shots you want. That is why I am here in Jackson hole. I can find Grizzlies most days in the summers, wolves are not that hard to find either but getting them close is another story. Elk, Moose, Coyotes, Fox, Bald and Golden Eagles, and Bison can be found anytime, usually within an hour. Wildlife is so dense here it is almost guaranteed. What is not guaranteed is getting in a photo worthy spot. You gotta get lucky. To increase your luck you have to spend a lot of time in the field.

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I have never seen so many wolves in my life as I have this month.  In the last two days I have seen 22 or 23 wolves here in Yellowstone.  Today alone I saw 17 or 18 wolves in three different packs, Lamar Pack, Canyon Pack, and Molly Pack, along with one lone wolf.  I watched seven wolves from the Molly Pack hunt a buffalo, singling out one of the buffalo and separating it from the rest of the group.  It was not a easy task and two of the wolves got launched into the air by an angry bison.  The pursuit was intense but the bison came out victorious.  A few miles down the road I came across an elk kill.  There were many people lined up at the kill waiting for the wolves to show up but since the carcass was move from where the car hit it down the road a quarter mile, the wolves hadn’t found it yet.  I got lucky and was first to see the wolves come out of the woods where the elk was hit and got some nice shots.

I am geting burnt out of the on mountain photography thing and arranged for a three day weekend which I used to take a vacation to Yellowstone!  It was a seven hour drive but already after the first day totally worth it.  Normally when I am out building up my portfolio I put on a ton of miles trying to get lucky and find the shot I am going to love.  Today everything seemed to just come to me.  I drove less than a mile before I found my first Coyote, and three miles before I found manny more.  While watching the Coyotes all day all kinds of animals came out of the air, water and grasses including wolves, eagles, and dippers.  The following are some photos I took today while watching Coyotes eat an Elk carcass.









WHAT A DAY!

Wolf action in the Elk Refuge is picking up.  There was a pack of 11 grey wolves bedded down there this morning.  I found this black wolf last night during the first half of the Superbowl.  I am pretty sure it is the same black wolf I saw with a friend a week before.  We watched it last week for over an hour as it made its way towards us from over a mile away.  It still only got to about 350 yards.  This time I was lucky enough to have it cross the road in front of me and walk up the hill and along the ridge of Miller Butte, fifty yards away at its closest.