Yellowstone National Park just finished events surrounding its sesquicentennial celebration. The park was established as the world’s first national park 150 years ago in 1872. While events this year didn’t really focus on the natural beauty of the park which was the reason for it’s establishment, I always prefer enjoying Yellowstone’s natural beauties. The geothermal features of Yellowstone are the largest concentration of such natural wonders anywhere in the world. 150 years ago, our forefathers had the wisdom to recognize this and set aside Yellowstone as a national park to protect and preserve this landscape. Recently I stayed the night at Old Faithful and I headed into the geyser basin before sunrise. Old Faithful looked as though it might be nearing an eruption (predictions aren’t posted overnight), so I decided to wait it out. As fate would have it, just as the morning sun peeked over a distant ridge, bathing the geyser basin in beautiful light, Old Faithful put on it’s show. Old Faithful Geyser and the thermal features throughout Yellowstone were and always have been the reason that this amazing park exists for the benefit and enjoyment of all people.

I was photographing landscapes when this mountain goat came up from below and walked into the scene I was shooting. Of course, it wasn’t a total photo bomb as I first saw it’s head as it moved up from below. I quickly adjusted what I was doing in order to photograph the goat with the same landscape I had been shooting and was pretty excited for the opportunity. On a totally different note, some clouds in the sky always make scenery better, in my opinion. While the goat and mountain work well, the clouds here really finish the scene well as opposed to a clear sky.

The hummingbirds have taken over the backyard and should stick around for about a month or so, depending on the weather and when it turns cold. Our garden is blooming nicely but we also have a lot of potted flowers. I usually prefer my hummingbirds with heads but when this Rufous Hummingbird moved up into the flower with it’s wings outstretched, I just loved it. I also love the translucence in the wings shown here with the flower visible through the outstretched feathers. Rufous, Calliope, and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds all visit from time to time and mostly there are females and immature birds. I say that because the females and immatures for all three species are predominately green and they can be really tricky to identify. This pose on this Rufous shows the tail wonderfully and the orange/brown/rufous color all the way down to the black tip is an indicator of it’s species. The Calliope and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds will show green all the way down to the black tip. There are other indicators too of course and I may mention them as I post future hummingbird images.

This image was from earlier this year, back in the Spring. I’m often asked about how I plan what I shoot and I reply that “I don’t.” While I do have some idea what I intend to photograph, nature often reveals itself instead. This small lake in Yellowstone has no inlet or outlet but is fed by thermal runoff, rain, and snowmelt. With the heavy snows we had in April, it was flooded and very silty, hence the blue color, which I hadn’t seen before at this location. The boardwalk, which generally guides hikers though a marshy area was actually floating and, while not good for the pine tree, the red pine needles made great contrast to the blue water.

After I posted the last hummingbird photo, I had this handsome gentleman show up the next morning. While most of the hummingbirds that visit my yard are Rufous Hummingbirds, I do get Calliope and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds as well. But I’ve never had a mature male of either of those species show up before. This is the first mature male Broad-tail I’ve had show up, so I was pretty thrilled that he provided a few photo opportunities before he departed. I’m hoping he’ll come back but the aggressive resident Rufous hummingbirds don’t make it easy.

The bison breeding season usually starts up by the end of July and runs through August. Typically most of the activity takes place in either the Lamar or Hayden Valleys but last week I came across a herd of bison in the Fountain Flats area. Of course the big bulls were following the cow bison around, as seen here. These large bulls should always be given plenty of room, much more than the required 25 yards, but even more so at this time of year when they’re fueled up on hormones. I photographed this one from my car, using a beanbag to support my telephoto lens.

I mentioned waiting for Grand Geyser in a previous post and thought I better share an image of it in eruption. Grand Geyser is the tallest predictable geyser in the world. it can reach heights of up to 200 feet. When eruptions are predicted, it has a fairly large window, so even with it being predictable, one has to be incredibly patient or incredibly lucky. On the morning I photographed it, I was patient. I arrived at the beginning of it’s two hour window and it didn’t erupt until the very end of it. But it was worth the wait as I was able to see and experience other geysers in the area, as I mentioned in my previous post. For an idea of how high Grand Geyser erupts, I did include people in the image above. Can’t see them? I cropped the image and circled the people to show the scale of the eruption, see below.

Back on July 3rd, I posted a photo of the mother swan sitting on her nest as she waited for her eggs to hatch. It was right around that time that they did actually hatch which would put these cygnets at somewhere near six weeks old. They still have their cygnet feathers are are a long ways from being able to fly though only a couple of months more and they’ll be ready to go. I did try to find them when they were smaller but each time I went looking for them, they were in tall grass feeding and I wasn’t successful in photographing them but last week they were napping and preening on the old nest. And in this image, they were joined by a mallard hen.

How many geysers do you see erupting in this photo? A couple of weeks ago I took an early morning walk through the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park. It was too early for any of the geyser predictions to be posted so I just chose a few destinations and headed out. It ended up being quite a geyser-ful morning as I saw Riverside, Daisy, Lion, Old Faithful, Castle, Grand, and Sawmill, as well as several smaller features. Once predictions were up for the morning, I decided to wait on Grand Geyser as I haven’t seen it in a few years. During the wait, Sawmill Geyser (seen in the front here) was putting on quite a show but then Castle Geyser decided to it was time for a major eruption of it’s own. It can be seen to the right of Sawmill in this photo. To the left, Tardy Geyser is also seen in this photo as it erupts as well. So if you guessed three erupting geysers in the photo, you were correct!

So far it’s been a slow summer for hummingbirds. This male Rufous Hummingbird has been the primary resident in the backyard but few others have shown up. I rarely see them feed at the garden lupine and this guy didn’t either but he did check them out. A couple more hummingbirds showed up today but it will remain to be seen if they stick around. For photographing hummingbirds, I use manual exposure and pre-set it based on where the bird will most likely be when I photograph. I also pre-set the focus since hummingbirds are so small and I don’t want the camera to hunt for focus. Then I hope everything comes together with a subject who will be cooperative. This male has been here since July 3rd but he tends to be very shy and has only given me two mornings where he was feeling cooperative. But with such a handsome subject, I’ll take what I can get.