Well, here we are, my second week with the website up and running and with that brings blog number 2. I hope you all enjoyed the first post and that this one is equally as good, if not better.
The weather here in Utah has been great the past few weeks, late summer/fall is perfect for me. Nice, brisk morning in the 40’s-50’s and 70’s in the afternoon. Seeing how I went to the bird refuge last week, I figured it would be good time to go out to Antelope Island since I hadn’t really been out there all year. There nothing quite like cool summer breeze, blue skies, fresh air, windows down, music playing, and a camera in your lap to help relax. When I first got out there I saw a few bison that were a good 150yards out with many onlookers, snapped some shots but they didn’t really capture my interest. So, I decided to head back to a road I know a lot of cars wouldn’t go to, since its dirt and pretty rutted out.
Lucky for me when I got there, there were 3 bison spread out and all roughly 20ft from the trail. With the sun high, the lighting wasn’t ideal, but I wanted to work with what I had. There was one bison laying down and another just slowly walking along grazing on what green grass was left beneath the overgrown straw. While I liked how the photos turned out in color, something about B&W did these the justice they deserved. It’s such a timeless look and really makes the bison stand out among the field of gold.
As I was watching one graze through the lens, I suddenly noticed that he had a little visitor with him. I would catch glimpses of this little sparrow, hopping along with him, undoubtedly picking up his scraps or little bugs that he unearthed.
American Bison
After that are, I decided to head to the Southern area of the island to Fielding Garr Ranch. Along the way you could see the clouds building over the Wasatch Front, which we just got our first snow on a few days ago. Wanting to capture the dark’s and the highlights in this shot, it is actually composed of 3 images stacked together (one being 1 stop underexposed, 1 properly exposed, and the last 1 stop overexposed).
Walking through Garr Ranch, the old building and machinery were very neat, while I will likely go back to shoot that at another date, decided to skip this time around due to the number of people that were there. Because of that, I headed to the backside, through the trees to a clearing where no one else was. There is a wonderful old fenced in area back there with weathered wood that has seen countless seasons of the ever changing weather. This overlooked the southern most point of the island with the sun barely peeking through the clouds, leaving a cool overcast where I was.
While walking through the tree are, I could hear numerous birds and would catch them momentarily flying from branch to branch. When I noticed a vibrant female Western Tanager just above me. Then, not 10ft away a Hermit Thrush was hopping along keeping just in front of me, it would stop and look, then hop a little further, keeping a safe distance.
Leaving the ranch and heading back towards the park entrance, I knew wanted to capture another landscape shot, then out in the distance, there were 2 bison and a picturesque backdrop surrounded in sunflowers. Which made me want to capture what comes next.
With the sunflowers in bloom throughout the state right now, and them being roughly 3-5ft tall throughout the island, I hoped that I would get a chance to capture a photo of the bison with them. Roughly 4 miles from leaving the island I got that opportunity I had hoped for. I couldn’t be happier with what I got, a big bull, well over 1K lbs slowly walking through the field of sunflowers. It was like he knew I was photographing him as he would pause and look directly at me.
This big boy had drawn quite the crowd since he was right off the road, as I was shooting, watching people get out and walk buy to get a closer look I noticed some people that looked very familiar, so I had to go and ask. Turns out I was right, and they are indeed a couple of the actors from the new show Yellowstone (which if you haven’t seen, I highly recommend watching). Super nice, down to earth guys that let me snag a selfie, turned out to be a neat ending to my day shooting at Antelope Island.