Category Archives: Wildlife

Wildlife Photos. Notes and thoughts related to wildlife photography.

Dall Sheep Ram photo, Denali National Park, Alaska

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A Dall sheep ram photo, taken late summer, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Well, I was going to post another little note about ANWR, but I haven’t finished it yet and I want to go to bed. So I looked through my folder of images for the blog, and had a cool kayaking photo all picked out when I saw this one and chose it instead. This photo was taken in Denali National Park.

I spent the whole day up on this ridge with a band of Dall sheep rams, it was awesome. They’re pretty used to people approaching them up there, so they let me get reasonably close. Mid-morning they all lay down in the shade and took a nap, so I did the same. A couple of hours later, one woke up, rose and walked around the area a little.

I tried to get in position for some shots, and he ended up on this little outcrop here. I was lying on the ground, and before ya know it, he walked right up to me. I lay as still as I could and he ended up nearly stepping right over me. It was pretty cool.

I’d love to get some images of rams like these over in the Wrangells, where the sheep tend to be bigger, but because they get hunted quite a bit, they’re WAY more skittish. Also, because Denali is so much more heavily visited, the sheep are very used to people. In Wrangell-St. Elias NP, even where the sheep are not hunted, they so rarely encounter people, especially the rams who stay up very high, that they’re pretty wary.

Maybe this summer I’ll have some more luck with them. Until then, Denali is the place for rams.

Happy Easter!

Cheers

Carl

Dall sheep ewe, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

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A dall sheep ewe stands on a ridge above the Chittistone Valley, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

OK, I’ll stop with the photos from Chile, taken a year ago. Here’s another image from this past summer, of a Dall sheep ewe we saw on the Skolai to Wolverine trip. We saw numerous Dall sheep along the way, but this one I was able to get close to and make some decent photos.

It took me quite a while, as it usually does shooting Dall sheep in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, because they’re pretty skittish.

Hunting is allowed in the preserve, and is allowed in the park by subsistence permit only – meaning locals are allowed to hunt pretty much wherever they choose, provided they don’t use motorized transport to get there – so they can’t fly in via bushplane to a place like this and hunt, but they can come in and hunt here if they travel on foot – not very likely.

However, even though hunters don’t get in to a place like this very much, the sheep are still very wary – I guess word gets around. Also, so few wildlife photographers spend any time in the park, the animals don’t learn to trust people, so the remain pretty skittish.

One more post for 2007!

Cheers

Carl

Bighorn Ram, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

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Bighorn ram in the Canadian Rockies, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada.

Hey Folks,

A few more posts before the electricity goes and I scrounge around in the eternal darkness of the Alaskan winter. This one is a bighorn ram that I photographed on my first trip to Jasper National Park a few years back. I recently rescanned it, and am spending some downtime now getting caught up on editing and processing images. It’s funny looking at scans of slides these days, after shooting digital for just a few years. Pretty amazing the difference – though I think that’s a function of scanning more than film versus digital quality.

Well, it’s insanely past my bedtime, and I’ve had a big day, so this will be short and I’ll head to my room. You all have a good one and enjoy it while you got it – whatever it is.

Oh wow – just as I’m ready to hit “publish”, one of the dogs upstairs goes insanely off her head. At this time of night that means one thing: I looked outside and there’s 2 moose in the front yard. How cool is that? A cow moose and her calf under the street lights wandering through the front yard. Awesome!

Cheers

Carl

Grizzly bear photo, Denali National Park, Alaska

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Grizzly bear, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Grizzly Bears of the Denali Tundra

Few animals reign over a landscape like the grizzly bear does the Alaskan tundra. They are awesome in every sense of the word. Even for those of us who have spent decades in the backcountry, seeing a grizzly remains the definitive Alaskan experience.

While Katmai National Park offers high-density viewing, Denali National Park provides a different thrill: seeing bears roaming the vast, open interior. However, for the serious photographer, Denali can be a lesson in frustration.

The Photographer’s Dilemma in Denali

Denali is a unique challenge. Particularly for photographing grizzly bears. You are close to incredible opportunities, but the logistics often get in the way. Most sightings happen from the park shuttle buses, which aren’t built for photographers. You are often shooting through glass or from angles you can’t control.

This leads many professionals to skip Denali, yet the draw remains. There are very few places on earth where you can find grizzly bears moving across such a massive, unobstructed stage.

Ethics and Regulations in the Backcountry

When I am hiking or backpacking in the Wrangells or Denali, I rarely set out to photograph grizzlies. The risk-to-reward ratio is rarely in the photographer’s favor.

Denali regulations require a 300-yard distance from bears. Photographing them in Katmai is much easier, and often results in better images, because we can be so much closer. Even with a long telephoto lens, that is too far for a professional-grade shot. Most decent photos require being within 60 or 70 yards. That’s a distance that is both illegal and unsafe when you are on the ground. When a bear comes over the horizon, the goal is safety and respect, not the shutter button.

The “Quirky Wise Old Bear”: A Backcountry Encounter

A few years ago, while coming down off a high ridge in the Denali backcountry, a friend spotted a massive grizzly. Easily the largest I’ve seen outside of Katmai. The wind was howling, and the bear hadn’t yet caught our scent.

I stood up, signaled our presence, and watched the bear’s reaction. He didn’t flee. He gave us a look that felt almost comical, as if he knew exactly how ridiculous we looked huddling in the wind.

He quartered up the hill and passed us at about 50 yards. We moved on, only to realize we were both headed toward the same valley. My friends thought we were being stalked; in reality, we were just sharing the same route. We spent the next hour climbing and changing direction to give him the space he deserved.

The expressions that bear gave us were beautiful—a wise, old animal knowingly in charge. I didn’t take a single picture of him. Some moments are better lived than captured.

Cross Fox photo, Denali National Park, Alaska

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Cross Fox Photo, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks

I promise I’m winding down my photos from Denali this year. One more after this one.

This is a cross fox, a color phase of the more commonly seen red fox. The black stripe down the back, with another one across the shoulders forms a cross, hence the name we give it “cross fox”. The animal is, for all intents and purposes, a red fox. In the wild, it’s not unusual for various color phases. They can be the typical orange-red, silver, grey, black, or a combination (like the cross fox). All red foxes have a little tell-tale marking, regardless of their overall coloring – they all have that little white tip on their tail. A true silver fox, which is another species, doesn’t have that little white tip.

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Bull Moose and reflection photo, Denali National Park, Alaska.

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Bull Moose and reflection, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

It’s WAY too late for me here in Anchorage – I just walked in a little while ago from this little blues bar, called Blue Central.

They have an open mic night every sunday, and I was fortunate to get to play this evening for an hour or more – nice finish to my week.It was tons of fun, and the folks I played with did a bunch of different styles of music, so it was interesting.

There’s nothing quite like sitting in with people you’ve never met before, and making music together. It’s all the more fun when they start playing tunes you have no idea what they are, how they go, what key they’re in, or anything else. You just have to listen closely.

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Snowshoe hare photo, Denali National Park, Alaska

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Snowshoe hare, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Wildlife Cycles: The Snowshoe Hares of Denali

This year seems to be the year for snowshoe hares – they’re all over Denali National Park. What was interesting is that I made 2 relatively short trips to Denali National Park this year, one in late August and one in mid-September, and both trips I saw numerous snowshoe hares, but they weren’t at all in the same areas.

From Savage River to Teklanika: Tracking the population boom

In August I saw an awful lot of hares in the first 15 miles of the road into the park, particularly near Savage River. In September, we didn’t see any bunnies there, despite my assurances to my parents that would – well, we did see one, he was

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Bull Elk, Jasper National Park, Canada

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Bull elk, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Hey Folks

Here’s the latest from the road! I shot this saturday evening, just before dark. I had long been looking to forward to bringing my parents thru the Canadian Rockies one fall, Jasper National Park in particular. I knew they’d love watching the elk in rut, hearing the bugles and feeling the energy of the place.

We had an awesome day, and visited Maligne Lake where we hiked out for a mile or so along the shore, and enjoyed some quiet of the forest and nearby mountains, before walking back and having lunch down the road by Medicine Lake.

A quick run into town for a milk shake, some email and shopping (my mother is a certified shopaholic) and we were back out in the park looking for elk. just before dark we found this bull and his harem. I grabbed my camera and tried to get some slow shutter speed images, blurring the motion of the elk as they moved about. I was really hoping I’d got this series right when it happened, as the bull looked awesome through the viewfinder.

After dinner this evening, I browsed through the images from today and was glad to see this was pretty close to what I was hoping for. A nice bull elk image, conveying the frenetic energy of the rut, and the intensity of the great animals.

Photographing elk is an addiction, I’m the first to admit. The rut is so different to other ungulates because of the setting (majestic mountains ranges such as the Rockies), the crisp fall air, fall colors, and the bugling. That bugling is such an amazing sound. my mum asked my why the elk bulls bugle, and I wasn’t sure. Some say it’s an expression of dominance, a challenge to other bulls, or a call to females. It could well be an expression of the sheer exuberance of being alive and a part of this incredible experience. I think if I could bugle like that as the mist settles down on the pine forest in the Canadian Rockies, I probably would too!

Cheers

Carl

Bull Moose, Denali National Park, Alaska

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Bull Moose, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Moose are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. It never ceases to amaze me at how enormous they are. From a distance they look “big”, but as I approach and get close to them, their size just blows me away. A big bull like this can stand 7′ tall at the shoulder, and weigh up towards 1800 pounds in their prime. I found this particular bull moose in Denali National Park, and I was able to spend quite a bit of time in the area, photographing him. The light and weather was almost always uncooperative for me,

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Alaska brown bear chasing salmon, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Bear Encounters in Alaska: Perspectives on Bear Attacks and Wilderness Risk

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Grizzly bear, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska
Young male grizzly bear on the tundra in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Bear Attack in Wyoming

I’ve been reading a little about a recent case of a bear attack, this time in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Fortunately, the fellow who was mauled is alive. Here’s one version of the story.

A lot of discussion has focused on this incident on various nature photography forums. I’m always particularly interested in the subject because I spend so much time photographing bears. I’ve had a few encounters that caught my attention. Much of that discussion revolves around the potential for this kind of thing to be a vehicle for new, tighter regulations brought into place by the National Parks’ Service, placing ever tighter restrictions on photographers and the activities they engage.

My Experience

I’ve been photographing bears in the wild a long time. Probably longer than most folks. I don’t know all there is about grizzly bears, but I do know more than most. I spend weeks on end every year photographing grizzly bears, hiking and backpacking in bear country, and talking to researchers and other naturalists who know bears.

So I’ve got my bear bones.

Points of Discussion About Bear Attacks

1. We Hope the Victim/s are OK

While I think that’s a worthy discussion, hopefully it’s not the be sole focus of our concern. Firstly, I hope the guy’s OK. I’ve been close enough to many grizzly bears that I can barely (now there’s a great pun) imagine how terrible it must be to be mauled by one.

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