Best Of

First Wildlife Adventure

I've never really done wildlife photography (mainly because of lack of opportunity), but my husband and I recently celebrated our 40th anniversary with a trip to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone. One of the things we did was schedule a photography tour at Grand Teton NP. I had wanted to shoot some landscapes and my husband wanted to shoot wildlife. I am a semi-serious amateur and my husband generally will tag along with me and take a few pics if I give him a spare camera. I've been trying to get him away from the "auto" setting, lol. (This photography tour helped him a lot in that area.) Anyhoo...the day of our tour ended up being cold, overcast, and rainy (in August), so it was a no-go for me and landscapes, so I set up to shoot wildlife as well. I am so glad I did! I shoot with a Canon 5D MKIII and I have a Canon 6D MKII that my husband uses. I put the Sigma 150-600 lens on the camera for him and I used my Canon 100-400 mm lens, so we were not close to any of the animals.

The damp, overcast day was perfect for wildlife. There were hardly any other people out in the rain, but plenty of animals. We saw a lot of elk, pronghorn, and moose. Here are a few of my favorites:

My husband had so much fun on this outing that he wanted me to schedule one while we were at Yellowstone, but I wasn't able to get that done. We did go out on our own though. We drove through Lamar Valley and did see a lot of bison, some deer, one bear, and a bald eagle . The eagle was flying and we weren't able to get a picture of him, but it was wonderful to see him nonetheless.

My husband has now been bitten by the wildlife photography bug, so we plan more adventures in the future.

Sherry Pollett

slpollett

Monument Valley

Monument Valley, Navajo Nation 2012

BMW Kurt

Desert Gold

dlplumer

Re: Post Your Black & White or Monochrome Images

shawnc

Re: The Bicycle Thread

Since we are not having bike-friendly weather this first week of spring (it's snowing - ugh!) I thought I would revisit a short trip we made last year.

During the short window of time we were able to travel last summer we decided to take a bike tour along the Iller river from it's confluence in the Danube in Ulm south to it's source near Oberstdorf in the Alps. We rode a leisurely160km in three days, taking time to visit points of cultural and natural interest along the way.

1) We started by taking our bikes on the train to Ulm and riding along the Danube a bit until we reached the confluence of the Iller and headed south. Here you see the imposing tower of the Ulm Cathedral (the highest church tower in the world)

2) Our first stop of cultural interest was at the baroque cloister church in Wirblingen.

3) As you can see, we are not light packers. We seem to need the same amount of stuff for three days as for two weeks. :-/ The trail along the Iller was generally pretty good as you see here, but not great.

4) Our first stop on day two was at the Chartreuse Cloister in Buxheim to view the magnificent carved choir stalls.

5) Picturesque villages dotted the way

6) Our 2nd culture stop of the day was at an open-air historical museum which portrayed village life through the centuries

7) We spent a little too long at lunch and got stuck in a downpour with no choice but to put o the rain jackets and keep riding.

8) The landscape highlight of the day was at the Iller Gorge

9) The third day started with an amusing find in our hotel parking lot...

10) On this section of the route we got into some lovely alpine scenery but unfortunately much of the length of trail was covered in loose gravel which doesn't make for a relaxing ride.

11) In mid-afternoon we reached our goal, the source of the Iller, where three Alpine streams come together and there is a commemorative sculpture.

12) After a short visit in Oberstdorf, which due to Corona wasn't so jam-packed with foreign tourists as usual, we settled our bikes on the train for our two-hour ride home.

sarasphotos

Katmai Bears

A collection of Alaska coastal brown bears taken on a Muench Workshops trip to Katmai. The coastal brown bears are essentially the same species as grizzlies but they live on the coast and eat fish all day. They actually grow larger than grizzlies due to the high protein and fat diet. The is probably the best place in the world to photograph bears because they're too busy fishing to bother with photographers. For the most part, we stayed in one place and the bears would come to us. Just amazing.

All pics taken with the Canon R5 and EF 100-400 MKII on an adapter with the exception of a few landscapes.