Wind River Range 2022

The week before Labor Day 2022, Scott and I did a fabulous six day lolly pop loop from the Scab Creek Trailhead into the Bridger Wilderness of Wyoming. We pushed it on day two to get to a private peninsula halfway up the east side of Rainbow Lake where I made my best ever Milky Way images. On day three we moved camp a short distance to near the outlet of Lee Lake and did a most excellent day hike to Noel Lake and the Continental Divide. Well above treeline, at the base of Nylon Peak, Noel Lake was an instant classic and is high on my list of the most stunning alpine lakes I’ve ever seen. The next day we would visit Donna and take an icy dip. We spent night four on the rocky terraces beside Bonneville Lake after a productive sunset photo session. On the hike out we passed stunning lakes and meadows that invited us to stay the rest of the season. The high grassy meadow lands with massive lakes in the Raid Lake/Dream Lake zone seemed worthy of more time than we had. We spent our last night in the vicinity of Little Divide Lake and got a burger and a beer the next afternoon at the brewery in Pinedale before saying sayonara.

Wind River Range 2023

I’m three years behind on blogging about my Wind River adventures. Thought I’d start with the most recent trip, just wrapped up less than two weeks ago. Scott, Erik, and I did what ended up being quite an elegant loop. We saw a lot of new country and hardly any people. Seemed kind of unusual for the Winds to hike all day for days on end and see nobody; I loved it.

We started in Elkhart Park, took the Pole Creek Trail toward Cook Lakes then caught the Fremont Trail climbing into Bald Mountain Basin where we left the trail and crossed the divide at Angel Pass. We dropped forever from Angel Pass to just below Upper Golden Lake where we spent two nights and did a day hike over Camp Pass between the Snowbank Lakes and got a view of Camp Lake and beyond. Then we followed the Hay Pass Trail from Golden Lakes over Hay Pass and down to Lake Victor. Next we took the Fremont Trail from just below Victor north over Hat Pass, past the Timico trail and caught the rugged Bell Lakes Trail dropping steeply to Chain Lakes where we took the Highline Trail back to Pole Creek. The photos are presented in chronological order.

We were on the trail eight days and spent seven nights in the backcountry. Long enough to really get into the rhythm of the place. Thankfully the weather held for us for the most part, until the final day we had really only hiked in the rain for about an hour total and the sun kept coming out so we could dry our gear. On the last day we woke up in the rain, we packed up in the rain and we hiked our last six miles in the rain; I kept thinking how lucky we were.


Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator

After “getting into” ducks a few years ago, the Red-breasted Merganser became an instant favorite with its spindly features, shaggy crest, and long thin bill. Somehow it seemed almost exotic; this is not a common bird to me. This image is from my first close encounter with a group of Red-breasted Mergansers from the edge of a pond under my gillie blanket. I was thrilled when I saw them heading my way in the golden hour light. I fired off as many shots as I could as they passed my position, and I struggled to keep track of them as they dove and emerged from the water. This was my favorite frame with great sharpness, eye contact, and another hen perfectly positioned to create a halo effect behind the subject’s head.

Tried and True Technique

Black-necked Stilt Himantopus mexicanus, Salt Lake County, Utah

My favorite avian images from the past three years have all been captured in the same way. I go to a place where I’ve seen birds before, a place where I know birds like to be; typically I set up at the edge of a pond where I’ve observed activity previously.

I plan on being in position an hour to an hour and a half before I want to take pictures. From my experience this is how long it takes waterfowl and wading birds to come around once I’ve intruded into their space. If I’m targeting the sunset hour, I want to take pictures in the light from one hour to thirty minutes before sunset, so I need to be in position at least an hour before that.

I’ll lay my closed cell foam pad down at the very edge of the pond, lie flat on my belly and pull a gillie blanket over me entirely, with just the barrel of my Nikon 500mm PF lens poking out. I just rest the camera and lens right on the ground; one reason I use a neoprene LensCoat.

Key to this set-up for me is a right angle finder. It allows me to stay in this position for hours without wrenching my neck to look through the lens. The more comfortable I am the less I squirm around which leads to more close approaches by my avian friends.

I’ll usually shoot wide open at f5.6 for velvety soft backgrounds. I set my shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second and my ISO to auto. This technique has yielded great results for me, it’s gotten birds to come much closer to me than I could ever approach them. This Black-necked Stilt came so close I could no longer fit its body in the frame, a few inches more and it’s beyond the close focus of my lens.

A Matter of Perspective

Brewer’s Blackbird Euphagus cyanocephalus, Salt Lake City, Utah

I wasn’t targeting Brewer’s Blackbirds when I made this image, but it quickly became a favorite because of that stare. Something about the pale iris of the male Brewer’s Blackbird that just makes their gaze intense. What really makes this image sing, what makes the isolation of that gaze possible is the perspective. Bird’s eye level perspective; no room for a tripod, camera and lens resting on the ground. Besides the obvious engagement with the bird, this perspective allows the plane of focus to be perpendicular to the ground, which means the background is distant and rendered extremely soft with a wide aperture.

Two's Company

American Avocets (Recurvirostra americana); Salt Lake City, Utah

Three’s a crowd…I know nothing of the relationship of this dyad, but there’s no mistaking the synergy in their actions. At times their movement was completely synchronous. It was fun for me to spend some time with these two, one early morning last October, at close range from my blind at the water’s edge. I made many portraits of these two birds, individually and together. The pair together is a little more challenging to pull off, but when the spacing is right, some of that synergy comes through in the portrait.

Escalante Adventure 2021: Color Portfolio

Looking at these photos in December, I’m less disappointed with them than I was in April. As the intensity of the moment fades from my memory, from the tiny scorpion hanging out in the sand at the door of my tent, to the bite of a chill wind and even a few snowflakes, to the exhaustion of hours of cross-country travel, clamoring over slickrock ridges and across deep sand plains, to the dizzying ledges and walls that looked too steep to walk on, the images become better surrogates of the experience.