This weekend I went fishing and searching for photo opportunities. Fishing was great but so was photographing Big Horn Sheep! This gallery has sheep from the Frying Pan river canyon near Basalt Colorado and sheep at several locations along I-70 between Silver Plume and Idaho Springs Colorado. The best viewing for Big Horn Sheep is around Georgetown Colorado, on the north side of I-70.
This time of year makes it fun to take “spooky” photos and here are two that I took several years ago in the Georgetown, Colorado cemetery. This cemetery still has a lot of the old grave stones, unlike many of the old mining towns in Colorado that vandals have either taken the grave stone or broke them into pieces. Earlier this September I went to Caribou, which was an old mining town high in the Rockies west of Boulder Colorado. Back in the 1970’s we would go 4 wheeling in that area and some of the town was still standing and the cemetery was ran down but the grave stones were still visible. In September all of the grave stones were gone, vandals had either broken them into pieces or taken them for souvenirs. What a shame!!
The end of September and October are great times to view the Elk and Moose in Rocky Mt. National Park. Here are some images that I took last week. I didn’t see many of the Bulls fighting this year, timing is everything.
It has been typical for me to photograph the Elk late in the afternoon, after 5:00 pm, so using a very high ISO of 800 or as much as 1600 is almost a necessity. Of course using my 200mm – 400mm f4 Nikor zoom with VR helps tremendously!
I went to the Rocky Mt. Air Show in Broomfield Colorado today and got some great shots of vintage WWII air planes. At the show they had a “reenactment” of Pearl Harbor, there were a lot of Japanese air planes that flew around, dive bombing the runway with fake bombs blowing up. (Pyrotechnics) Lots of fun!
Two weeks ago Janet and I went to Sand Wash Basin near Maybell Colorado to photograph wild horses and got some great shots. Those of you not from Colorado are probably thinking “where is Maybell”, well it is about 18 miles west of Craig which is 45 miles west of Steamboat Springs. It is definitely out in the “boon docks”. But it is a great place to visit and see what the old west was like. All of the horses look to be very healthy, some down right FAT, but when winter comes the fat will help them make it through the cold. Maybell has the honor of having the coldest recorded temperature in Colorado -60 below zero!!
Hope you like the photos.
I was in Seattle/Bellingham Washington for my Nephew’s wedding and had the opportunity to stay in Seattle for a few days and then travel to Bellingham. I have never been to Washington before and I was impressed by the beauty of the area. Seattle is a wonderful city with tons of photo opportunities, and the country side is beautiful. This gallery has a few of images that I captured. Hope you enjoy them.
The Space Needle was taken from our hotel window. The State Hotel sign featuring “75 cent” rooms is NOT where we stayed, but it is a great sign that is in the old downtown. We did take the underground tour of Seattle which was really interesting. Seattle built on top of their downtown buildings for various reasons and I would recommend the tour if you are ever there. One of the photos is of the side walk and the next one is of the same sidewalk but looking up from underground. While waiting at the bus stop, for about 25 minutes I noticed an old man staring out his 4th floor window, I took the photo of him and upped the contrast for an effect that I think captured my vision of him.
Other photos are of the market in Seattle, flowers that we saw while driving through the country side, a lighthouse I saw from a ferry that was taking us across the bay, a slug (the only wildlife I saw) and of course, my nephew and his bride, Scott and Rebecca Hutchison along with Scott’s two daughters.
Well I am finally getting around to posting some of my photographs from our recent trip to Alaska. Three weeks and 6500 miles! I had a great time driving around and photographing the wildlife, although finding wildlife can be frustrating at times. We drove on back roads for hours and didn’t see anything, then we would camp for the night and after waking up and looking outside there would be a cow moose and twin calf’s literally in front of our door when I opened it! It really seemed that we saw wildlife in parking lots a lot more than on the open road.
Here is a photograph of a black bear cub climbing a tree. Mom and her three cubs had just crossed the road in front of us on the Cassiar Highway in British Columbia. Being lucky is really important in getting great wildlife images.
I will be posting a lot of my Alaska images in my Gallery in the next few days
Growing up fast
Sunday morning I went back to the nest that I had photographed a owl and her chick two weeks ago. Mom wasn’t there but her two babies were, and they are growing quickly. Just look at the previous image of the mom and chick down below and you will see a dramatic change! I will attempt to get one more shot before Janet and I head on our road trip to Alaska Friday. By the time we get back the babies may be in the area still but more than likely they will be heading off on their own.
