Let it Snow!

 In all the years I have lived here, this is only the second time I have been snowed in! With a driveway more than a mile long it is not an option to shovel the snow. The good news is that it is a weekend, the power is on and I have enough food to survive about a year. The temps are predicted to be in the 50's by early next week so I just have to wait until it all melts away.

In the meantime, it has been fun to try and capture images of all that whiteness. I got bundled up and hiked to the gate and back yesterday - not an easy task when the snow is up to your knees. Today I am committed to wrapping Christmas gifts so they can be delivered to family over Thanksgiving.

This was the scene just a few days ago as 

 this young mule deer lounged in the back yard. I mentioned that one of the differences between white tail and mule deer is the huge white tail of the white tail (duh!).  Another difference is in the size of the mule deer's ears. They are amazingly big. This gal has beautiful black accents on her ear edges, making them even more obvious.

Sharing the Trail

 On Friday I hauled Ken off to the Beartooths (it didn't take much persuading!) in a quest to capture more bird photos as well as to set the scene for another photo assignment, a self portrait.
A lucky situation was that the road between Pilot Creek and Cooke City was still open - a rare event for this time of year. The road is not plowed in the winter, which comes early at that elevation, so it is often impassable by the end of October. Not this year! We decided to spend Friday night in Cooke City and make one last foray into Yellowstone Park from the NE entrance this season.

As it was, it snowed heavily Friday night and so we were lucky to get back through on Saturday but I'm still glad we did it.

The beautiful fox above was spotted just outside the Park entrance. I got a couple shots - most pretty blurry - before he hightailed it into the woods.

 On the Beartooth hike on Friday we not only managed to find lots of birds but also found ourselves sharing the trail with a few other creatures. These grizzly tracks were very fresh - obviously made that morning - so he was close by.

The other animals we thrilled in watching from a safe distance away were the mountain goats. We saw two separate groups; one a twosome and the other with four in the herd. I will post those shots another day.

White Tail

One of the final assignments for my beginning photography class, due in mid-December, is to capture 6 images of birds that winter in Wyoming. (We got to choose our own topics.) This weekend I spent a little time walking through the brush beside a nearby creek searching for unsuspecting feathered friends to shoot. While there I surprised these two beauties. We rarely see white tail deer on our place as they prefer riparian areas. Mule deer are much more common to us and the two species seem to keep their distance. 

People who do not have a lot of deer nearby will often ask how to tell a white tail and a mulie apart. There are quite a few differences but the most obvious one is the feature that gives this species its name.

The little spike didn't wait around for his companion - he threw up his warning flag and took off!

Panorama

So today's lesson was about putting together panoramas from your landscape photos. What a blast! I have made pano's before but not through Photoshop which allows me to keep such resolution. I started with a combination of 7 photos from this weekend's hike in the Clark's Fork Canyon. It looks great but I decided to not post it here since it is more than 200MBs!

Instead I am posting a combo of two vertical shots of the canyon from above. It may not be the most beautiful shot but it points to the endless possibilities of using this technique. If I printed this out it would be 12" wide by 30" high.

Coyote

 Wow! If someone had told me two months ago what the last eight weeks would be like, I would have dove under the bed screaming and covered my head. I truly believe that was the busiest and most diverse episode in my life. I gave two lectures in different parts of the state, I attended several quilt shows, I sold my greeting cards in a vendor's booth, I traveled 1500 miles to attend a week of meetings, I lost my FIL to complications of aging, I participated in several Search and Rescue incidents including one that required more than two weeks of intense searching for a  missing hiker, I received my Wilderness First Responder re-certification, I had dinner with the governor at his residence in Cheyenne and I had an article published in a national quilting magazine. All this and much more took place while I was attending my college photography classes on a daily basis (although I will admit to playing hooky many times to accommodate the crazy schedule).

The insane pace is my first excuse for not posting for some time. The other excuse is one I totally did not expect - as I am taking more and more photographs for my classes, several things are taking place: 1) All my images are now being shot in RAW, meaning they are 25-30MB each. That means lots of editing and downsizing before I can post them on my blog. Most of my editing work is being done at the college on the Mac's; meaning I also have to figure out how to transfer them home to my desktop before use. 2) Many of the photos I am now taking are those required for school projects and are not those I would normally take for the blog. For instance, I have about a hundred shots of an egg. Yes, an egg. That was to teach us how to shoot portraits in different lighting situations. Fascinating for me but not, I suspect, for readers wanting to see pictures of wildlife!

I promise to try and do a better job. I may not be posting daily as before but I do intend to try and post at least twice a week going forward.

I am starting my revival with the two photos above of a coyote hunting rodents in Yellowstone. He was amazingly productive as he brought out mouse after mouse and consumed them before moving on to try again. The funny thing was that the bison seemed to be totally uncaring of the fact that this predator was strolling among them.

A Time for Everything

 Just as most of the wildflowers are calling it a season and the prairies are pulling on their coats of gold, one unobtrusive plant is making its first stand of the year. The Arctic Gentian is a beautiful flower that takes over the Beartooth tundra in late August and early September.

The first photo shows the plants getting ready to bloom.

 From the top.

There is a sea of the white and purple-blue blooms that will remain on the ground for the next few weeks.

I started back to college this week. I am working toward my 5th degree - this one in commercial photography. My posts will, no doubt, be less consistently regular but I hope my shared photos will improve in quality over time.

It is interesting being back in class after 20 years - especially when everyone there is about 35 years my junior! So far I have been welcomed with friendliness and not a little bit of curiosity. I am looking forward to this two year journey!

Early Heart