Always carry your camera!
I had to drive to Jackson, WY yesterday for work to visit a job site in the Snake River Sporting Club development and as usual I brought my camera bag with me. The job itself took me along the Snake River on the rarely travelled East side and I did see some wildlife and I got to cross the famous Snake River bridge.
The wildlife along the river was a bit too far away and not exactly worthy of National Geographic but it's always good to see a herd of elk, it reaffirms all the reasons we live here. Did I mention it was -17 degrees when I shot these?
Speaking of the temperatures, here are some phone shots from my drive to Jackson...
A few things of note with this last picture aside from the temperature, I listen to odd audiobooks and there are certain times of the year where heated seats are even more useful than tires.
Ok, so after I finished up my business in Jackson I headed back out the canyon towards Alpine, WY and just before coming out of the canyon I noticed something very important in photography. I saw someone in a turnout with $15K worth of camera gear pointing all that gear towards something on the cliffs. This is easily the most important lesson I have learned in realm of photography to date. If someone is willing to drag 50 lbs of very expensive gear out of his vehicle when it is -15 outside, that person has probably found something interesting to see. The lesson? Pull over! But watch for ice, plowing into this person's truck would be frowned upon in most photography circles. After safely parking, I grabbed my Canon 1DN MK II body and my Sigma 50-500mm lens and sauntered over to where the guy was standing, looked up and saw five mountain goats up on the rocks leisurely grazing on whatever they can find in the snow.
The photos did not come out tack sharp like I wanted but this also leads to another lesson in photography. If your camera / lens combo weighs just shy of nine pounds and you are hand holding while pointing up in the air, you are not going to get the best photos, I don't care how butch you think you are especially if you are still recovering from shoulder surgery. Point being, take the extra time to set up your tripod, you brought it with you so why not? We are heading out tomorrow looking for bighorn sheep and you can rest assured that the camera will be on the tripod. Hopefully we have some usable shots for you!
For those interested where the mountain goat photos were taken see map below:
