The first animal we photographed at the Triple D Game Farm was a grizzly bear.  I can’t remember for sure, but I think her name was Rose.  We started shooting pretty early in the morning before the sun had risen above the mountains to the East.  This gave us good, soft, low contrast light.  Tomorrow I’ll post some of the images from later in the session when the sun was shining directly on our location.

The grizzly was between 20-40 yds away from us most of the time.  There was a small electric and additional waist-high wire fence between her and us.  The trainer kept her attention away from us by giving her plenty of treats, but we were told to make no sudden moves and to stay together as a group.  We also were not allowed to crouch down or get low in any way.  Despite all the cautions, I never felt like I was in any danger.  It was pretty cool to be that close to such a big and powerful animal…and to get pictures.

The first images is my favorite of the grizzly bear set.  I like the reflection in the water.  I also like the running shot.

This was our first animal so most of the group was just firing away regardless of what the bear was doing…me included.  I think we all got just a little too excited.  I threw out hundreds of shots from this session alone.  But, we all got better at being more selective as we moved on to other animals.

…if you want to see pictures from my visit to the Triple D game farm this summer.  We headed up to Kalispell for two days during the class, Outdoor Photography: Becoming a Professional, at RMSP.  David Middleton was our instructor and is a great teacher.  If you get a chance to take a workshop with him, do it.  You’ll learn a lot. 

We were at the farm for two mornings for about 4 hours.  In that time, I took close to one thousand photos of a grizzly bear, mountain lions, bobcat, adult and baby lynx, snow leopards, porcupine, and several raccoons.  It was an amazing experience.  The animals are treated so well there.  It was obvious that the trainers really care for the animals.  I even saw the grizzly bear (pictured to the left) sucking on his trainers thumb at one point.  The trainer still has his thumb. :)  The same trainer later gave a snow leopard a hug.  Either he’s nuts or he has a great relationship with the animals.  I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

I will be slowly posting my pictures from this workshop over the next couple of weeks.  This way I’ll have time to go through and process all the pictures I took from my recent trip to California.  I visited San Francisco, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, wandered around downtown San Francisco at night shooting the Christmas decorations and architecture with some Flickr friends, and then visited Yosemite for two days with my friend Pei and her fiance, Eric.  We hiked the Upper Yosemite Falls trail and Mist trail all the way to the top of Nevada Falls, getting snowed on both days.  But, that just made it all the more fun and even more picturesque.  I can’t wait to go back someday.

Oh…and put your hand down.  You look ridiculous.

I’m currently in Salt Lake City waiting for my connecting flight to San Francisco. I really love flying over the mountains. It’s way more interesting than flying around the Midwest. Too bad my seat was directly over the wing.

I’ve finished posting images from the Summer Intensive portion of the summer.  These are the first from my Outdoor Photography course that followed Summer Intensive.  These shots are from three separate assignments we were give early in the 10-day course.  The first assignment was to take an iconic shot of Missoula.  Basically, that means a shot that you can immediately identify as being from Missoula.  The added challenge for the Summer Intensive students in the class was to include a subculture of Missoulian life in the picture.  I chose to shoot some bicyclists along the River Trail system, including Mt. Sentinel in the background.  Missoulians love their bikes.

The second shot was part of an exercise in shooting at civil twilight, or the half hour before/after sunrise/sunset.  During civil twilight, the sky becomes a very rich blue color.  The shot of the flag was taken in the morning shortly before sunrise (which is extremely early during the summer in Montana.  I don’t know how I managed to get up that early).

The third image was part of an assignment to shoot an environmental portrait of a person.  An environmental portrait is an unstaged photograph of a subject in their natural environment.  This assignment was designed to help us get used to shooting people.  Outdoor photographers often shy away from including humans in their shots, but images including humans usually sell better.  I chose to head to Biga Pizza for dinner and asked if I could take some shots of the cooks preparing the pizzas.  I managed to get a shot of one cook tossing the pizza dough in the air.