Elk at Yellowstone National Park
Elk are one of the easiest of the large mammals to see in Yellowstone. Most of these pictures were taken either near the Madison River or near Mammoth Hot Springs, two of the best (and easiest) places to watch the various elk herds.
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Change
… for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Steve Jobs
I don't remember when I first read Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement address, but it has haunted and inspired me ever since. It was this quote that troubled me the most. While I like my job and the people I work with, I've never loved my job the way Jobs clearly loved his. But until I can find a job that will pay me to spend my days hiking and tossing hedgehogs and handing out belly rubs, I guess I never will.
But I took his advice to heart in how I spend my free time, and if you look back through my hiking journals you'll see these are the years when I started planning at least one big hiking trip per year. When I started getting up before dawn despite my night owl nature and heading to Ridgefield over and over and over again. When I stopped worrying over the cost and bought the big lens that has delighted me so. When I learned to keep an eye on those journals and watch for when the gap to my last outing grew too large, a warning sign I had slipped into a funk, and celebrating my favorite things through photography became a way to work myself out of it.
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Last Call
I had just arrived in Yellowstone when I came across this bull near the Madison River. He had a much smaller group of females than another bull a little ways down the river. It was near the end of the fall rut and he was clearly exhausted, laying down in the meadow beside the river. Even when laying down with his head on the ground, his antlers stuck up and gave away his position. He never kept his head down for too long though, as eventually one of the other bulls in the area would bugle and he’d lift his head and call back.
I was dressed more for the day’s drive and not for the cold fall weather, so as the sun began to set my teeth began to chatter despite my winter coat. After spending an hour and half with this one bull, though, I finally got the look I wanted as he looked in my direction as he called out, nicely displaying his rack of antlers.
I chose a vantage point to give me a similar background to the bull below (taken in a similar location the year before), with the alternating fields of light and dark brown.
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Last Stand
I was watching this bull and his harem at Yellowstone for quite some time. The rut was mostly finished so he was pretty calm (and likely pretty exhausted). He started out close to the road where I didn’t like the background, so I focused on the cows and calves instead, all the while hoping he’d venture out into the willow thickets which presented the background I wanted — the alternating light and brown strips of the thicket.
As I sat in the mud in a gentle rain, he eventually wandered to check on a cow that was laying in the grass between two willow thickets. I photographed the two as they nuzzled one another, but I also wanted a picture of the bull by himself, but he would never position himself quite right. He eventually stopped and to my good fortune, not only looked up, but had his mouth open. It looks like a menacing pose, like he’s been corralled into the thickets and is preparing to make his last stand, but it was actually a very peaceful scene and one of my favorite moments from the trip.
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Mystery
This youngster was a part of the herd of the bull above. I was lying on the wet and cold ground alternately photographing the two, the bull in his prime and the calf with his future before him. Part of the fun in photographing young animals lies in the cuteness of the little creatures, but I also like the mystery of where their life is headed. This one has survived it’s first summer and now will face its first winter.
If it survives into adulthood, it may not live quite as long as elk in other parts of the park. A ranger had stopped by and mentioned that he had participated in studies of wolf kills in the area, and one finding was that because of the high fluoride content of the water in this drainage, the bones of the adult elk were more brittle than normal. A broken leg can be a death sentence in the wild.
I took these pictures literally at the end of my trip to Wyoming in the fall of 2006, it was time to pack up the cameras and start the trip home to Oregon right after these pictures were taken. A beautiful end to a beautiful trip.
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Rainy Day Browns
For the past few years I’ve visited Yellowstone and the Tetons for a week in the fall, somewhere between mid September to early October. Depending on the timing of the visit, I’ve seen moose and elk in the midst of their rut as well as the fall colors — one year I managed to catch all three. The parks are still well-visited but not to the maddening extent of the summer crowds.
This year I visited at the tail end of September and into the first week of October. The fall colors had just hit their peak, I rarely saw moose, but caught the tail end of the elk rut. There isn’t much fighting amongst the bulls at this point, but still plenty of bugling, and you can visibly see how exhausted the bulls are.
Most of the animals I saw and photographed in Yellowstone were elk. While I was disappointed to not see them on the trails, I did spend some time with multiple herds between West Yellowstone and Mammoth. This female was part of a large herd near the Madison River. The bull was mostly obcured back in the trees, closely watched by the telephoto lenses of a small herd of photographers.
The cows and calves were more visible, however, so I hunkered down in the rain and focused on them. When this cow momentarily reached back to lick her fur, I was reminded of a dog curled up to sleep and I couldn’t resist the intimate portrait. While I find myself wishing Canon would add weather-proofing to it’s prosumer cameras each and every time I’m out in the rain, I do like the effect of the rain here, making the wet dark fur of her neck stick up like an untamed cowlick, and drops of rain visible along the lighter fur of her body.
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Photographing Children
Most formal portraits of children are taken in a studio or a staged setting, with a staple of rubber duckies and cute phrases and wild gesticulations to get the child to look at the camera and smile.
I prefer photographing children in a more natural environment, and needed no toys or waving arms to get this child to smile.
I’m just that good.
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Sense of Place
It’s usually pretty hard to provide a sense of place in a close-up portrait, but this intimate portrait of an elk cow strongly hints at Yellowstone with the burned and broken tree in the background. It was indeed taken near the Madison River in Yellowstone, she was part of a herd that was resting in the rain.
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Look Who’s Here!
After visiting Yellowstone each year from 2004 to 2007, I didn’t make it in 2008. It was a hard decision not to go, not only because I have such a good time there, but also because the elk get so excited when they see me.
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Rain
Photographing in the rain adds challenges, especially since my cameras aren't weather sealed, but I love the way it makes the fur of the elk stand up and out. I found it very relaxing to sit near this herd as they lounged about in the gentle rain.
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Snow
Of course if rain adds challenges, so does snow. I'm always nervous driving in snow on my hiking trips, as I'm traveling alone and not used to the winter weather. The snow wasn't too bad on this day in Yellowstone, but it would get much worse not long after when I dipped down to the Tetons.
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Evening Prayers
My first thought when I saw this elk sitting in the hot springs was that its antlers must be heavy, as its head kept drooping until its nose pressed into the white mineral powder. It reminded me of when it's a cold winter day and you're sitting in a warm church pew and despite your best efforts, your head keeps drooping forward during the sermon until you realize you're falling asleep and suddenly your head snaps back upright. Well, not me, but some people. I am always paying rapt attention, I am.
Despite clearly being exhausted by the fall rut, when other males in the area started bugling, the bull shook off its weariness and slowly walked into the adjacent meadow to add its voice to the chorus. If you view the larger picture, you can see a light dusting of mineral powder on its nose.
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White Spots
During a week of hiking in Yellowstone, I had been too tired to get up early. But on my last day, I forced myself out of bed before sunrise and arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs to find a herd of elk cows and their white-spotted calves had bedded down in a meadow beside the mineral deposits. Some of them were already up and about while some, like me, seemed to want to eke out that last bit of sleep. I'm glad I got up so early, as not only did I enjoy the quiet morning with the elk, but over the next couple of hours I'd see a variety of mothers and their young, from black bears to bison to moose.
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Madison
An environmental portrait of a bull elk grazing beside the Madison River. The river attracts a variety of animals from elk to bison to bald eagles to fly fishermen.
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No Telephoto Needed
One day in Yellowstone, I decided to walk around the thermal features in the Mammoth and Norris areas, taking small landscapes in places like the Artists’ Paintpots. Even though I wasn’t looking for wildlife, the wildlife found me.
Just a little ways off the boardwalk were a few elk, including a cow and her calf. The calf wanted to nurse so it reached underneath it’s mother and gave her a hard smack to get the milk flowing (I saw bison do the same hard head bump, the mothers didn’t seem to mind but I instinctively covered my nipples each time).
I had my wide angle zoom out to photograph the thermal areas, but the elk were close enough that I didn’t need to switch to my telephoto to photograph this lovely little moment.
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Built-in Back Scratcher
I suppose his antlers would work a little better as a back scratcher if the tines were turned the other way round, but perhaps evolution had a different use in mind …
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Elk Songs
Now look, I understand the desire to take your iPod with you wherever you go, believe me I do, but maybe that collar is just a little too tight …
(For the record, lest you think the Yellowstone rangers were guilty of animal cruelty, the radio collar may not be the most stylish but it was a good fit, the cow had just grabbed a mouthful of plants, and she just happened to stick her tongue out when I snapped the picture)
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Fitful Sleep
There were several aspects I wanted to capture in this picture. There’s a slightly comical aspect in that the sleeping bull is almost invisible save for his antlers which stick up out of the tall grass and completely betray his presence. The bull isn’t really trying to hide, but I wondered if he wouldn’t have preferred at that moment to be able to just take the antlers off while he slept, if only so he could lay his head wherever and however he liked.
I also wanted to convey the exhaustion the bulls feel at the end of the rut. He slept most of the time I watched him, but couldn’t resist raising his head and answering the call whenever another bull bugled in the distance. Fortunately all of the people watching him kept their distance so he was able to rest in the quiet periods.
A couple of weeks before I visited, one of the bulls had its neck snapped while it was sparring with one of the other bulls. These fights usually aren’t fatal, but add in disease, predators, and the long winter, and I do wonder how many of the animals I see will still be around come spring.
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Biding His Time
This young bull was hanging out on the periphery of the harem of a much older bull. It kept a respectful distance and never sought to challenge the old fellow, despite his exhaustion at the end of the rut. The older bull was more concerned about bugling rivals further off than this youngster.
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Duel at Dawn
Two males gently sparring in the early morning hours of a fall day near Mammoth Hot Springs. I was surprised to see how closely they watched each other when their antlers were locked and they were pushing each other back and forth, I had assumed that their heads and eyes would be down.
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Insults at Dawn
While elk spar during the fall rut, it rarely ends in injury as their fighting adheres to a strict protocol. Antler to antler fighting is acceptable. Antler to face is not. Antler to rear end is right out.
The sparring is preceded by a period of insults. My elk is a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure the elk on the left had just insulted the one on the right with an old elk standby: "Your mother was a moose and your father was a mule deer!" This appeared to fluster the elk on the right, who stammered for a moment before finally just sticking out his tongue, as shown here. It is the ultimate insult, so when the tongue comes out, there's nothing left but fight fight fight!
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