| The Retired Photographer

Bull Elk in Velvet, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

My wife and I were driving the north loop of Yellowstone National Park this day looking for wildlife like everyone else was. Good thing the crowds wouldn’t be in park for another few weeks. As we drove along, enjoying the scenery, we approached a turnout and spotted a photographer with a big lens. Well, whenever you see someone with a big lens, you stop…if you are a fellow photographer. I didn’t see anything special to photograph but headed over to see what he was preparing to photograph. He set up a nice, heavy tripod with a Canon 500mm lens and a Canon 2x teleconverter on it. Camera of choice was a 1D Mark IV. I asked him if there was anything special to photograph and he told me to take a look. Not hesitating, I looked through his viewfinder and saw a bull elk with a younger one following. Both elk were so far away they were hard to see with the naked eye if you weren’t looking through a viewfinder. It was quite breezy, which didn’t help viewing through the lens with a 2x teleconverter attached…a lot of wind vibration.

The elks were on a tree studded point jetting out into a small lake and heading back to safer ground. We continued driving up the road to head them off…maybe, looking for another turnout where they might turn up and pulled into one. I was the only one there when the photographer from the other turnout pulled up beside me. Seems we had the same idea about where the elk might show up. I carried my 5D Mark II with the 70-300mm L lens mounted on the back seat and my 1D Mark III mounted on my Mamyia 500mm lens in the back luggage area. The other photographer already had his 500mm outfit out and was walking into the brush, I grabbed my 500mm outfit less tripod and started to follow.

We were about 100 feet from the cars when the photographer turned to the right and headed off. He saw a young couple hiking down below and they were signaling him with their hands that the elk were over to the right in the brush. At that point, I saw a huge set of antlers coming straight at me and told the other photographer one was coming right in front of me. He spotted the big bull and we both got ready with our cameras. I started shooting, but discovered the big bull elk was filling to much of my 500mm frame and stopped photographing to see where he really was…well, he was almost on top of me, so I started to back up at a pretty good pace. Meanwhile in the turnout, a lot more people stopped to see what was going on and were yelling at me to get out of there. They didn’t have to tell me twice, but I still wanted to back up keeping an eye on the elk.

When I got back to the car I grabbed my 5D with the 70-300mm lens and started shooting getting this image above. It seems that all that elk wanted to do is get across the road to better feeding grounds. The younger elk did show up, but was quite skittish about going amongst all the cars to get across the road, so he went further down the field to cross before joining the bigger bull elk.

All in all, quite an exciting adventure…Both elk were molting and their antlers were still covered in velvet. They will be rubbing the velvet off on trees and scrub brush getting ready for the fall rutting season.

Where was my wife during all this you ask? She ducked back into the car and “froze”…her own words. The other photographer’s companion ducked into their vehicle also and she is a photographer. After all this we had a great conversation with the two of them. His name is Jerry Hunsanger and you can find him on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/people/jercyber/ and his friend is Kathy Piper at http://www.flickr.com/photos/katpiper/ .

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 70-300mm f4.5-5.6L at 106mm

ISO 200, 1/500 sec at f/8

admin :: Jun.30.2012 :: Wildlife :: No Comments »

75th Anniversary of the San Fransisco Golden Gate Bridge and the USS Iowa sails to Los Angeles

The day before my wife and I left on our National Park vacation, the USS Iowa was towed to the Port of San Pedro in Los Angeles. The ships exterior has been restored, here in the Port of Richmond, for the last few months. In its new home in Los Angeles, the ship will be recommissioned and become a Naval museum. Probably the last time a Battleship was sailing anywhere in the world…

Also during this weekend was the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate bridge spanning the Marin Headlands across to San Fransisco. The actual anniversary was on Sunday with a newly opened visitor center, displays, and great fireworks in the evening.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L at 50mm

ISO 200, 1/320 sec at f/11

admin :: Jun.27.2012 :: California Coast, General :: No Comments »

Moulton Barn, Teton National Park, Wyoming

Traveling from Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Yellowstone National Park you pass through Teton National Park, in fact, your entrance fee covers both parks for seven days. One of my objectives in Teton NP was to shoot the Moulton barn. The last time I shot the barn was with medium format film camera, Mamyia M645, thirty something years ago. Gone are the wooden fence and corals but nice to see the barn still standing. The only animals still around the barn are some friendly prairie dogs.

From Wikipedia: The T.A. Moulton Barn is all that remains of the homestead built by Thomas Alma Moulton and his sons between about 1912 and 1945. It sits west of the road known as Mormon Row, in an area called Antelope Flats, between the towns of Kelly and Moose. It is near the homestead of Andy Chambers. The property with the barn was one of the last parcels sold to the National Park Service by the Moulton family.

I photographed the barn in HDR, processed in Photomatix, and tone-mapped it natural conserving the natural appearance and showing detail in the shadows. I then processed it further in Lightroom 4 to bring out the image to its fullest.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L at 45mm

ISO 200, 1/200 sec at f/11

admin :: Jun.23.2012 :: General, Old Buildings :: No Comments »

Historic Yellowstone National Park Tour Bus

I have been looking forward to photographing one of these historic buses throughout our vacation a few weeks ago. We found this one on the last day of our vacation, before heading back home, in Yellowstone National Park. Our first two vacation stops were in Zion and Bryce National Parks, each of the two National Parks had these buses to ferry visitors around in starting in the early 1930′s. I was very disappointed that these buses were not parked in front of the park lodges where I saw them last in the 1970′s.

I understand that there are eight historic yellow buses running in Yellowstone and a few more red historic buses running in Glacier National Park. It is good to see these buses again doing their job as they once did long ago.

That is my beautiful wife Nancy standing next to this bus for scale.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon G12

ISO 100, 1/60 sec at f/8

admin :: Jun.20.2012 :: General :: No Comments »

Horseshoe Bend, Arizona

Horseshoe Bend scenic overlook is just outside Page, Arizona on highway 89. I dropped off my wife at the local Sonic fast food establishment before heading out to photograph the iconic Horseshoe Bend. The temperature hung around 94F and my wife really didn’t want to hike in that temperature so she grabbed a book to read while at Sonic.

The trail, from the parking lot, goes through fine red sand then gravel up to a crest of a hill. Walking down the other side of the hill to the overlook goes through deep sand, total hike is roughly 3/4 of a mile each way. The overlook is on top of a mesa looking down at Horseshoe Bend 1000 feet below on the Colorado river.

To photographic the complete bend you must get on your hands and knees, then lie on your stomach peering over the edge. This is not for the faint of heart. This image is a full frame wide angle zoom shot taken at 20mm. You can get a cleaner shot about 500 feet to the right up on top of some rocks, that is, to get rid of the foreground rocks jetting out. But, you will lose some of the left hand bend in the horseshoe and your image will have a sense of you,the photographer, hanging out into space.

This image was shot in HDR to bring out more detail in the shadows, river, and surrounding rock. I felt it was better to shoot the scene in HDR than to shoot a single image and have more of a flatter scene do to the position of the sun on the rocks.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 17-40mm f4L at 20mm

ISO 200, 1/400 sec at f/11