This is one of those places I had always been looking for; I think maybe it’s one of those places that we are all looking for. I was happy to grab it and keep it part of my story.

There is a bit of drama to this one, I suppose. I had been adventuring on a little river about a mile from here. I had parked and walked off into the forest here in Wyoming by the Tetons, in search of these kinds of environs. I was shooting a nice part of the river and then I looked up — and a huge bull buffalo had walked up behind me, about ten feet away. These things are kinda dangerous and unpredictable! The bison was not impressed with my camera in the slightest, and he just regarded me for a while… It looked like my path would be blocked, so it gave me another reason to go deeper and further upstream.

After a bit, I found a huge beaver dam, that backed up this little lake, just large enough for me to fit in the frame…

(Oh, and a side note from yesterday’s thread… yes I have the D3X now, and my goal is to post the first shot from that beautiful beast on December 25th, which will thusly be known as D3X Day. I still have a wide myriad of shots from the D2X that I continue to process and post, so the next few years will have a broad mix…)

I had the pleasure of being invited to be a judge at a regular photo contest here in Austin for the ACC Photography Department. I have spoken there before and I suppose I did just barely an acceptable enough job to be invited back! The students and faculty there are always extremely nice and I enjoyed being with them – a special thanks to William Tolan and Kathryn Watts-Martinez.

I wish I had more ribbons to hand out! There were some outstanding entries… There were about ten or so I almost gave it to, including this one masterful retouching I wish I could get my hands on to show you all. But they were all anonymous and I can’t find any of them!

I ended up giving the award to some gal with the last name Saunders who took a picture of that perfect barn in front of the Grand Tetons. She was not in town to accept the award, so I have no idea who she is! If you are reading this, contact me so I can post your photo here for the world to see… it’s quite amazing, and better than the ones I have taken, which still remain unpublished… I’ll probably get mine up in the next few months, but I don’t think it is as good as hers!

Here is a photo that I took in Wyoming just a few miles south from hers… (which I hope she sends soon!)

Okay maybe we can have a fun, meaningless contest here on the blog, eh? Who is the first to identify this bone? The winner gets a hot tub weekend with the elusive Dr. Electro who is a frequent guest of the blog, who I just assume, for some reason, has a hot tub.

I found this bone at a terminal moraine in a granite-strewn flood plane between Wyoming and Montana. I don’t know if that provides much of a hint… but maybe.

I’ll tell you the process I went through… I was lucky enough to spend a few days with Jack Horner at this really unexpected scientific and libertarian conference. I figured that he would know what the bone was, which, of course, he did, but he was unwilling to answer my simple question. He made me reason it out for a few days…and look for more bones. Jack has a very interesting way of teaching people things… and most of what I ended up learning had very little to do with the bone itself.

Here are a few other hints that are not really much good at all. That is my hand holding it. As for the relative size of my hands, I can tell you confidently that I have a man-hands that can tear apart lobster like Jerry’s girlfriend. Also, between thinking sessions, we used it as a marker for bocce-ball, and it never splintered or shattered.

It’s always a challenge to shoot in a forest! They are so interesting while you are there, but the frustrating thing is trying to capture the moment to show others. I don’t know why forests are harder to shoot than other things, although I have a few theories. Perhaps it has something to do with how we "feel" in a forest compared to what we are actually seeing. When we lay down these memories in our brains, the imagery is tied into the feeling, and the "feeling" part of it is very difficult to capture with simply the imagery in a photo. Anyway, this all gets a bit cerebral into some crazy thoughts about photography, but you get where I am going!

These rivers always seem to have a nice sense about them. Meandering about the meadow by day and then heading into the narrow canyons at night. It seems like a peaceful existence…

This comes from my textures tutorial located right here.

This is the Mammoth area of Yellowstone. It’s in the north, up near the Montana Wyoming border.  The whole area is very alien with that acrid smell and the crystallizing trees…

I tracked this guy for over two hours through the wilderness. He knew I was following him for sure as we would move from trees to fields then back to trees. After the first 10 minutes, it was obvious that he was a million times more agile… and I was a million times more dirty. After the event, not only was I covered in dirt and leaves, but it took me half an hour to figure out where in the world the road and my car was!

These ranch fences went on and on… I probably could have stopped anywhere to take this shot — it looked equally long no matter where you stood!

By the way, it is impossible to get an extended tripod through those slats, so don’t even think about it.

I checked the sweet internet earlier in the day to see exactly what time sunset was in Yellowstone. I have the sunrise/sunset website bookmarked, which is kinda strange, maybe… Anyway, It said 7:03 or something like that. I knew full well that it means the exact moment when the sun dips below the horizon, so the sun really “sets” about 30 minutes before that… but that didn’t help me get into the right position to see the sun right before it dipped below the mountains.

Luckily, there was a fine band of yellow sky lit up above the mountains, reflecting across the Madison River.

It was just me and about three hours of sunset at Yellowstone.  I feel very fortunate to be friends with the head ranger at the park, and just beforehand, at his home, he listed off about four awesome places to go see it.  He was right!  Also, he let me borrow his tripod, so that was a real life saver (as any good ranger is known for!).