Sunday, July 31, 2011

Wyoming in July


The girls and I spent a week in Wyoming with our friends Grace and Marcia.  We saw bears (grizzly and black), bison, elk, deer, coyote, fox, marmot, picka-pen, chipmunks, rabbit, swan, geese, and antelope but no moose or wolves.  The weather was beautiful and cool (very compared to OK) and we saw geothermal features in Yellowstone (Old Faithful and Grand - now we are official Gyser Gazers), caught rainbow trout in Windy Lake, hiked to Spooky Cave, counted wildflowers, hunted petroglyphs, rode the Absokora hills, and followed smoke to a forrest fire up Horse Creek Canyon. 

Oh, and we took a few photos.

Wonderful Wyoming.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Aliens Among Us

It's been awful hot outdoors the past month or so and difficult to spend much time there on purpose, but poking around in the flora you might come across some interesting fauna. Here are a couple of examples.

These critters were captured outdoors and brought into the "studio" for photographing. The caterpillar (Hyalophora cecropia) was slow enough to get proper light and focus with little effort but the mantis required a 15 minute stay in the fridge to slow him down. Both bugs were shot under fluorescent light with a digital Canon EOS xs equipped with Mamya 45mm lens and eos adapter and extension rings at f22 and various slow shutter speeds. Everything was done through eos utility and xp laptop. After processing: Photoshop Elements 6.
 Both bugs were released alive.