Just a few varied nature images today and my thoughts about them.

What a tangled web we weave.

Silhouettes are the purist’s  method for bringing some order to the chaos
that is often around us. Even in the natural world.

In order to make this scene display some “view-ability”  and maybe a touch of
elegance, it took me several minutes of examination. I lost some of the most
powerful light during that time, but gained some visual relief from finding some
order and simplification.

I have been fortunate to have been able to travel around this country and
Canada a fair amount in my life. A lot of that was photography related. It always
shocked me, how few photographers made wildlife images in great landscape
locations, and conversely, how few image seekers create landscape imagery in
wildlife parks and refuges. I fully get it that we might begin with wildlife subjects
in refuges, and landscapes in parks labeled for such, but doing one and not the
other never even occurred to me.

Yellowstone N.P. in Wyoming, is certainly premier, if  not the premier wildlife
photography destination in North America. That said, the place is also beautiful.

This is almost a snapshot as I took some time out while photographing Bison to
capture this view from the valley. My camera was of course, snapshot or not,
affixed to a sturdy tripod.

I caught this female Greater Scaup right downtown by Lake Michigan in my
home city.  She caught herself some sort of Mussel or such, and after playing
with it a while, ate it.

Making images like this and the next one, always require a balance between
enough depth of field, via your aperture setting, and enough shutter speed to
freeze any movement. In this case, F9 with a shutter speed of 1/400th sec was
the perfect combo as o panned with her as she swam.

I do not know if anything is more fun than watching and photographing water
birds.  Even if you miss the shot you are entertained every moment.

Beavers are busy. Constantly. This one was busy doing what else, building a
dam. I enjoyed my day parked next to this pond, and was entertained much like I
was with the duck.

The camera settings for this image, which posed similar issues as the previous
one, were 1/500th sec with an aperture of F5.6. Pretty similar to the duck photo
despite that the light was not identical. The images were made several
hundred miles from one another, but only a few days apart.

Insects are wildlife too. They can cause some new issues in photography,
as the need to be up close is more prevalent.

The settings here were 1/60th sec, and an aperture of F/16. Being up close,
although I did use a 300mm lens, provoked the need for a fairly deep aperture.
Of course a tripod was used.

I could spend hours pursuing beautiful insects on beautiful flowers.

Finally, let us close with yet another favorite subject of mine. I know not how
many subjects I have called a favorite, but I mean it every time.

Late afternoon light, Navajo Sandstone, and the texture, and mixture of light
and shadows that is provided, is pure nirvana.

The image was made in Monument Valley Utah/Arizona, one of the world’s best
known landscape destinations. I did in fact chase wildlife images there, just as I
created landscape photos in Yellowstone. The creation of images like the one
below, fulfilled another aspect of satisfying my creative urges than does today’s
previous photos. We all have many sides, and our image making can and I think
should reflect that.

Enjoy nature and God Bless,
Wayne