Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (September 2005) - For the first time in a long while, my best friend and I managed both a Spring and a Fall trip to Yellowstone. We had a great time and had some great wolf sightings, which is always our main goal on these trips. As fascinating as wolves are however, for many people the Fall in Yellowstone is all about the elk rut, or elk mating season. I didn't manage any wolf photos on this trip, but I did get quite a few photos that captured some of the drama surrounding the rut, and I've include a sampling of these below. The Fall can also be stormy, and on this trip that was certainly the case. Stormy weather can be miserable, but the dark clouds and subdued light can make for some great landscape photography. I've included a few of my favorite landscapes from this trip as well. | |
This huge bull elk is bugeling a challenge to any other nearby bulls, warning them to stay away or face his wrath. This photo was shot in Gibbon Meadow at the height of the rut. During the rut, bulls are filled with raging hormones and spend their days trying to collect and impregnate a harem of cows, all the while driving off any other bulls trying to steal them away. Bulls are extremely aggressive during this time and will charge anything, including cars, people, trees, or whatever. This was the biggest bull, by far, that I saw on this trip. | |
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Look at the rack on this "Big Guy". Spectacular. Just before I took this shot, this bull had run off another challenger. He chased the would-be-king for about half a mile before slowly sauntering back where he posed for this shot. This guy was in control and no other bull, or anything else for that matter, was going to take his harem away from him. | |
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Here's another shot of the "Big guy" making the rounds on the periphery of his harem. I took about fifty shots of him before the bright afternoon sun came out from behind the clouds and ruined the light. If I thought I could do it without putting you to sleep, I'd show them all. But for now, I'll limit it to just these three (at least of this bull - I've got more shots of another bull elk immediately following this one). | |
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The next morning I headed back to Gibbon Meadow to take some more shots of the "Big Guy", but he was nowhere to be found. So I headed over to the Canyon area and found this bull elk. He's not as spectucular as the "Big Guy", but he's still pretty impressive. This bull is actually a satellite bull. He hangs around the periphery of another bulls harem and tries to have amorous adventures with the cows when the main bull is asleep or elsewhere. Maybe next year he'll be big enough and mean enough and just plain insane enough to be King-of-the-Hill and have his own harem. | |
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This open mouth pose is, I believe, some sort of scenting for female elk. It makes me think he's tasting the air. I followed him for about half an hour and he spent almost the entire time with that little "grin" on his face. | |
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When you're a "Big Guy" wanna-be, but not yet big enough to pull it off, you can't be too careful. Checking your six is probably a good idea from time to time. This guy certainly seemed a little nervous, and kept looking all around as if he were expecting a huge massive bull to come storming out of the trees at any moment. | |
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By now you've probably gotten the idea that bull elk basically go insane during the rut. The hormones raging thru their bodies make them do wacky things. Take the next shot for instance. One of the things bull elk do during the rut is pee all over themselves. A lot. And when they aren't peeing on themselves they're peeing on the ground and then lying down in it. The things guys do to get layed?!? | |
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This particular bull is hanging out at Mammoth Hot Springs, the park headquarters. Elk like it here because there's always nice green grass to munch on in all the nicely manicured lawns. It's one thing to have a crazed bull running around in the hinterlands. But a crazed bull in Mammoth Hot Springs is a whole different kind of craziness. There are a lot of people milling about. And frankly it's a toss up as to whether the people or the elk are the craziest. You wouldn't believe the nutty things people will do. I've seen a man pose his hobbling grandfather and infant child right in front of a bull that was practically foaming at the mouth just to get a family snapshot. Rangers are constantly running around trying to protect the public from their own incredible stupidity. Sometimes people get hurt. If that happens, it's not good news for the bull. Sometimes they get tranquilized and have their antlers cut off. If they're past offenders, they may be euthanized (the red ear tag in this bull indicates he's a past offender). So it goes. | |
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Here's an example of what can happen when hormone-crazed bull elk and people mix. The driver of this van pulled up near one of the Mammoth Hot Springs bulls so someone inside could snap a photo. The bull took offense, got up a running start from about 20 yards away, and rammed the van. I watched the whole thing but didn't have my camera with me. The driver raced away and parked in the relative safety next to the hotel. I ran into the hotel, got my camera, and took this shot. The bull was fine. He bounced off the van and wandered away, his rage momentarily satisfied. The people in the van were a little stunned but were otherwise OK. So, the moral of this story is don't get close to bull elk during the rut. You could get killed, or you could end up getting the elk euthanized. | |
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OK, you're probably sick of elk shots by now, so how about a few landscapes. First up is the quintessential Yellowstone landscape image - the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, shot from Artist's Point on the south rim of the canyon. I've photographed this exact same scene more times than I can remember over the years. Each year I think "this will be the photo that finally captures the essence of this place". But my shots allways come up short. It's just that it's very hard to really capture the full grandeur of this scene. There's no way to capture the distant rumble of the falls in a photo. Or the faint screech of the osprey lower down in the canyon. And there's no way a photo can capture the constant breeze that comes up out of the canyon, or the scent of the nearby evergreens, or the sheer 3D'ness of the scene. Well, no matter. It's a fantastic place and I photograph it over and over just because I love standing in that spot. I suppose I could have included a smaller version of the shot so that you could see the whole scene without scrolling, but this scene just demands a big canvas. I think it'll make a decent 13" x 19" print. By the way, just to give you a sense of scale for the scene, at the top of falls, just to the right, is a sizeable viewing platfrom with several people. In this shot, the people are so tiny they can hardly be seen. | |
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As I mentioned at the top of the page, one of the things we had a lot of during our Fall 2005 trip was stormy weather. When I first wrote this paragraph, I typed "bad" weather. But from a photography point of view, stormy weather is often great weather. The stormy skies add drama, and the overcast results in nicely saturated colors. This next shot is of Soda Butte, a small, old cinder cone deep in the heart of the Lamar Valley in the northeastern corner of the park. It's roughly 30 feet or so across at its base. I was driving around the park on my own - my friend had left the previous day - and it had been raining almost non-stop for the last hour or so. When I got into the Lamar, the rain became intermittant, and an occasional shaft of sunlight would briefly penetrate the clouds and light up the ground spectacularily. It occured to me that Soda Butte would look fantastic in that kind of light. So I drove there, set up with a long lens, and patiently waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, with the dark clouds in the background, a shaft of sunlight broke thru the overcast and for about 30 seconds lit up the cone in brilliant golden light. And here's the shot. | |
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I should probably have presented only a single shot of Soda Butte, but here's another one taken a short while later from a different angle and in overcast light. I don't know exactly why, but I really like this shot. Perhaps it's the memory of taking the shot - in this case the thing I remember vividly is the smell. The things you don't get from a photograph are the sounds and smells of a scene. Soda Butte is kind of unique for this part of the park - it's the only thermal feature that I'm aware of in this area. And it emits a strong sulphorous, rotten eggs smell. It's fantastic :-) | |
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After getting my Soda Butte shots, I decided to head south. The storms were starting to fall apart and the sky was full of these broken, dark purple clouds. I thought the Yellowstone River overlook in Hayden Valley, in the east central portion of the park, would make a great photo. If only the clouds would last a little longer. So off I went, west thru the Lamar Valley, up and over the snowy pass on the sides of Mt. Washburn, down past the Yellowstone Canyon road, and down into Hayden Valley (about an hours drive). My luck held and the dark clouds were still coming thru in waves. I must have taken a hundred or so shots of this S-curve in the river as the clouds rolled overhead and the patches of sunlight raced across the ground below. | |
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I couldn't decide between the previous shot, and the next one. So I included both. Like I said, I took about a hundred of this scene alone. Be thankful I didn't include them all. | |
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And one last landscape shot. It's not the best landscape I took, but I like it all the same. It's either a neat lenticular cloud formation, or it's an alien mothership. You decide!! The colors are pretty accurate. This was taken after sundown and these clouds were high enough to catch the last rays of sunlight. This orangy glow only lasted about a minute, and then was gone. As they say, timing is everything. | |
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I hope you enjoyed this small sampling of photos from my Fall 2005 Yellowstone trip. Those who know me know how much I love this place. I hope some of that love has shown thru on these images. My next visit is scheduled for May 2006. I'm counting the days. | |
Copyright © 2005-2006 Hans Giersberg |
Bull Elk, Gibbon Meadow, Yellowstone NP © Hans Giersberg (Digimarc Encoded)
