Tag: Illusion

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Wyotana Volcanic Display

Wyotana Volcanic Display
Wyotana Volcanic Display

Wyotana Volcanic Display (Satire)

So I wake up the other morning and much to my surprise, was a local pyramidal hillock that was blowing it’s top. The steam was rising, the cauldron boiling. I anticipate pyroclastic flows, lahars, glowing red hot clouds and other volcanic manifestations similar to what buried Pompeii. Ash should start falling any moment. Maybe “Sneaky Pete” the windmill will save the day and blow the ash away…

Back to my normal programming: OK, this is NOT a volcano. It takes a properly positioned camera lol. Those are normal clouds up in the sky. Yellowstone is not blowing up. The Devil’s Tower/Missouri Butte Volcanic Neck field about 50 miles to my southeast has not reactivated. No, the Laramide Orogeny has not started back up just yet.

That Butte (called Turtle Butte), is made of layers of river sands stacked on top of one another. The volcanic shape is a result of a hard cap rock which resisted erosion better than every thing else between it and myself. All that rock has been removed by erosion. It is a erosive remnant of all the material that used to surround the hill. Hundreds of feet if not thousands of feet (depending on your location) of sediment has been removed around here. Remember Devils Tower? That used to be a mile or so deep. Now it sticks up 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. That river system essentially removed enough material to expose the harder tower. Same process here except just the top of the hill is harder rock.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Wyotana Volcanic Display

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Comet NotSoWise Shooting Star

Comet NotSoWise Shooting Star
Comet NotSoWise Shooting Star

Comet NotSoWise Shooting Star

I finally get to the top of the first ridge to our east. Reaching the top, a vision unfolded around me. The telephoto crushing the distances as I turn toward the apparent shooting star in the sky. The illusion of motion fancifully provided by a cloud bank. That alone shadowing the low atmospheric ice to the left. Thus providing the obvious shooting star the proper debris tail. I actually took some rare play time and made an Inverse color negative of this resembling a remarkable comet. I might work with that image as art down the road. Talk about a naked eye comet lololol. I suggest Ray Bans™. You might remember all the Comet NeoWise images lately on your newsfeed. Well this is Comet NotSoWise. I just love it when my lenses come across natural illusions.

Photographic Musings:

I by experience expose the highlights correctly and dig the details in the shadows out within the digital dark room. If you expose the landscape properly, the highlights are WAY over exposed and there is no recovering image detail that is washed out… gone… It’s easy to take a photo of the sky just like it is but unless you have a way to differentially bring out the exposure in the dark areas, you have a dark silhouette for a landscape. No camera made today I can afford would take this raw. The highlights are exactly as the camera recorded them but the formerly black landscape had all this detail hidden within the data. A program like Photoshop™ and or Lightroom™ is a really important addition to your tool kit.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Comet NotSoWise Shooting Star

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What Am I Looking At

What Am I Looking At
What Am I Looking At

What Am I Looking At

I sure had to look twice at this. Ok, three times…. Maybe it’s just me….. 😜 It sat in my “Images to finish” pile for a few weeks, it kept popping up. I finally gave in and finished it. First of all it was VERY colorcast by the last seconds of the day sunlight painting the scene. IT was horrible to color correct back to reality. The illusion / confusion is just so durn unusual that I had to give in. Usually I’m placing problem children like this at the 6PM post position lolol.

Doing some quantity of photography of ungulates, I often get interesting “alignments of deer or Pronghorn. Usually easily when they are in herds. These two were all by themselves. I was actually quite a ways out from them. Having said that, the back doe wanted nothing to do with me having never seen a big black truck around before. They were out by some salt blocks mooching off the ranch.

Musings:

Ranchers do a LOT more for the wildlife than most non-ranchers understand. Feeding our cattle supplements birds, mice, deer, pronghorn and all the creatures that in turn eat on those. For Instance: We have kept 4 stock tanks open 365/24/7 for 18 years now. Believe me in this cold country, unfrozen water keeps these guys alive and around here. We pump that water which takes electricity. We only need to keep one tank open for our stock.

The deer are known for eating into hard collected haystacks. Powder River and Little Powder River Drainages are all rich in deer. An equally large number of partially eaten hay bales in stock yards lolol. Wildlife management is very important. Sometimes supporting them just a little makes it all possible. Take off the edge so to speak 🤔 .

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: What Am I Looking At

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Pronghorn Siamese Illusion

Pronghorn Siamese Illusion
Pronghorn Siamese Illusion

Pronghorn Siamese Illusion

These Twins like all rambunctious baby animals frolic most of the day. Play interrupted by periods at mothers spigots to fuel such activities. Grass and Sage turned to protein and fat by an animal that has very little fat on it’s body. I’ve never seen a market for Pronghorn Milk. I suppose you would have to be pretty fast…..

I suspect there are tame Pronghorn as rescues in some gov’t program about. They are probably like any other animal raised by humans being tolerant of us. This would not be beneficial to them with the hunting culture out here. I’ve never seen them in petting zoo’s either. Their fur is not the softest ungulate fur out there. It’s kind of coarse if you’ve felt it, you’ll understand.

Mom was just off frame to the right. It’s fairly difficult to get them all in the same frame with any reliability. When mom isn’t feeding them, she’s trying to feed herself to keep up with the calorie demands. The kids do start eating grass but this is a tough year. We are very dry and JUST had a CRUSHING hail storm. Much of the grass is flat as a glass plate to the ground. It will reduce the rist of fire.

Our fire truck was started today and is more or less ready for this season. I have some things to test and make sure is stocked. The prairie is very dry is lots of hour fuel.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Pronghorn Siamese Illusion

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Turtle Butte Volcanic Eruption

Turtle Butte Volcanic Eruption
Turtle Butte Volcanic Eruption

Turtle Butte Volcanic Eruption

A volcano blows up on the border of Wyoming / Montana. Here we are 40 miles from the closest historic Volcanic Field and those haven’t gone off for a LONG time. I wake up to shaking the other morning and much to my surprise, was a local pyramidal hillock that was blowing it’s top. The steam was rising, the cauldron boiling. I anticipate pyroclastic flows, lahars, glowing red hot clouds and other volcanic manifestations similar to what buried Pompeii. Ash should start falling any moment. Maybe “Sneaky Pete” the windmill will save the day and blow the ash away… Back to my normal programming: OK, this is NOT a volcano.

A simple sedimentary sandy remnant, Turtle butte has great aspirations. But Alas I suspect turning into a cinder cone volcano is not going to come about in the scheme of things. If this were really a volcano, I’d set up an outdoor hot dog and marsh mellow stand for the tourists. I mean based on buffalo encounters at other volcanos, they like to get close to things a tad out of their league.  I wonder why it’s called “Turtle Butte”? 😜

The Volcanic Fields regionally are several and spread in various time periods. Some being of serious world wide significance. Yellowstone of course is widely known as a “Super Volcano” the explosion of which would create a rough few centuries afterwards. There are many smaller volcanic complexes of various ages around the region. A pipe here, a sill there. The 16 or so million year history of Yellowstone starting out in Washington / Oregon culminating with a hot spot in Wyoming/Montana/Idaho. The Snake River Plain showing the path of the hotspot and a sequence of volcanic calderas across the continental scale landscape over that interval. That is a whole different scale of event for another time.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Butte

Title: Turtle Butte Volcanic Eruption

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Pregnant Mule Deer Doe

Pregnant Mule Deer Doe
Pregnant Mule Deer Doe

Pregnant Mule Deer Doe

I’ve seen a lot of various looks from Mule Deer before. Few this precious as from this doe. It is obvious her look was annoyance with me. I’m patient though and tend to wait out such attitude. It wasn’t long before she was back grazing with the group around her exhibiting normal deer behavior. They more or less are accepting my Black Ford Raptor as just another Big Smelly Black Angus moving across the Prairie. I seldom scare the local wildlife or push them intentionally. I have found that if you pressure wildlife, they will run from you next time you see them. So for me to get really close to the wild inhabitants of Wyotana, I have to be very respectful of personal space.

Most of the Does are VERY pregnant this time of year. The wheel of life is turning seemingly with a quickening in the late spring. The quantity of newborns born at one time assures a new generations. Deer have a few predators up here but human’s riding their machinations account for the majority of deer fatalities. In the two decades I’ve driven extensively in deer/pronghorn country, only a few over a dozen deer have been “hit” by our families cars. Less than one a year average. We have never filed an insurance claim from a deer impact.

Having discovered early on putting a custom made front bumper / crash bar/ deer bumper on any vehicle that will support it is necessary. Cars… no reason to put a 500+ pound chunk of steel on a Toyota lol. The pickups and SUV’s that we own are all graced with a significant steel front end. Hitting a deer at 60 mph or so is no fun certainly for the driver OR the deer. Bright bright bright headlights help too. Being able to see a 1300 pound Black Angus at night on a gravel road is a good thing if you are traveling. Cleaning a deer you hit at speed off your vehicle takes a while. Trust me on this. My son lost a passenger Mirror from swishing past a deer. They do hit you in the side sometimes ☺️

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Pregnant Mule Deer Doe

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Looking Into the Rainbow

Looking Into the Rainbow
Looking Into the Rainbow

Looking Into the Rainbow

Normally when you look at a rainbow off in the distance, it is actually way out there. Well if you get a 1200 mm lens and point it into the base of the rainbow, you might see something like this. That far ridge is at least 3 miles away with the closest trees at a mile. Telephoto images are notorious for having distance perspective crushed. You might think I’m standing at a normal 55mm just a few hundred feet from those closest trees. As I say… they are a mile out. Crushed is good for getting the proper look for this kind of perspective.

Rainbows are infinitely movable as you change your position to the sun. You can move a rainbow to align it over what you wish if there is enough rain shaft plus you are mobile. All rainbows are on the other side of the sky from the sun since they are a refracted light phenomena. If looking at the sun, you see a “rainbow” like phenomena like 22 degree halos and a host of others are on the sun side of the sky. The other side of the sky is strictly rainbows.

Photographic Musings: Manual Settings… Only three settings.

Distance is your friend. OK, another F-stop discussion…. High F-stop numbers take away a LOT of light from your light capture boxes. (camera). The higher the number, the smaller the hole in the lens for light to travel through. At the same time you make that hole smaller by turning up the F-stop number, you are thickening the “depth of field” focus depth. F-stop becomes a double edged sword. You can open up the aperture (turn down the f-stop number) and get a lot more light versus a pin hole at maximum F-stop setting. But you loose depth of field/focus depth) So Bigger hole in the lens= shallow depth of field but a lot of light. A smaller hole in the aperture means less light but it gives you the ability to focus on things close AND far at the same time. SO, you have to compensate for HIGH f stop numbers by adjusting the other two settings. Turning up camera sensitivity (ISO) boosts what little light that comes through a small hole in the lens. IT’s a double edge sword too though. More Camera Sensitivity (higher ISO) will give you a grainy image and introduce color noise. Speckles and big grain are not desirable so moderation is necessary. Lastly you have shutter speed. Slower than 100th of a second you risk blurring moving objects. Any movement from anything would blur under longer exposures. Rule of thumb is 1/100th for minimum handheld telephoto to 400mm (rested).

Location: Biss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana)

Title: Looking Into the Rainbow

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Frosty Lake Scene

Frosty Lake Scene
Frosty Lake Scene

Frosty Lake Scene

Compositional ART but I did nothing to the image other than clean it up a bit. Oh, and I rotated the image 80 degrees. Originally it was randomly oriented. On the window pane to the artificial horizon created by tilting the camera. This was a pre-dawn window scene on a cool/frosty late April morning with a distant yard light providing the illusionary moon behind the trees. This forest scene is full of fractal frost trees with their “reflection” on a 2 dimensional surface (window pane). The 3 Dimensional perspective was apparent in the lens of this very small portion of a window. This image covers no more than an inch wide area. This hopefully will be the last frost image from this year until October. 🤔📷

Photographic Musings… Little things:

There is so much to take images of in the macro world of ultra close focus lenses. Most “Macro” lenses don’t magnify per se. Only considered 1X, their main ability is to focus VERY closely. There are Camera lens macro’s that go up to 5X but you need a LOT of light to make that work. I note that any of the “unusual” Chinese manufactured macro lenses you might want, you might want to get shortly….. Just saying.. 😔

Rarely do I use a tripod in my own house. For this moment, there was very little light for this. To get that light back, several seconds of time exposure eliminates hand held free wheeling with a camera. I use 4 different Macro lenses. Each for different purposes being tools in my kit. This was a Sony/Zeiss 90mm Macro on a Sony Alpha 7RII camera body. Simply shadowed by an LED sidelight for the depth. The bokeh effect on the yard light is prismatic too lol. I noticed the rainbow only in processing the file on the big screen. I usually don’t miss color like that. …. Some diffraction by the ice going on. Seeing the potential of that light then aligning it to the scene was the goal. 😜

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Frosty Lake Scene

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Parks Ranch Rain Shafts

Parks Ranch Rain Shafts
Parks Ranch Rain Shafts

Parks Ranch Rain Shafts

The Rain Shafts over the Barn on the Historic Parks Ranch in Northern Campbell County is classic. I used a telephoto shot about a mile out for the perspective across 40 miles of landscape with a 20 miles wide river valley between ridges here. The ridge in the shadows is only about 3 miles out . Weather over the far ridge. The ridge in the pink light is 40 miles out.

This is about 4 miles from our ranch. That direction is the closest drive I have to make to get to an asphalt road. The next closest paved highway is about 12 miles from here. These guys are my closest neighbor at around 4 miles from my homestead.. It’s 70 miles to the closest traffic 3 way light from here. The trip to those hills in the distance would take you an hour. I’ve had meeting I’ve driven to Casper to many time. (4 hours or so drive). Distances are big out here to go anywhere but where you are lol.

The Historic Parks Ranch is now part of a larger cattle association. It is managed under the Trail Creek Grazing Association. Old original buildings out here. In this remote backcountry were certainly built out of locally milled wood. The rough milled wood from cut from the local old grown pines. The original of homestead there is HUGE and finished around 1920 I understand. The 1950’s marked the last updates to the main house. Still utilized for hunters with year round caretakers living on site. That barn is classic.

Location: A few miles from The Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Parks Ranch Rain Shafts

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High Ridge Veiled Sunset

High Ridge Veiled Sunset
High RIdge Veiled Sunset

High Ridge Veiled Sunset

(Illusion of a Tsunami wave coming into the shore but it’s all clouds)

Getting just the right angle toward a sunset with the foreground is a challenge sometimes. I wander the hills sides and ridge tops of the remote borderlands of Montana/Wyoming. I the the big distances in either an UTV (Polaris Ranger Crew) or my Ford Raptor F-150. The distances in this area are such that covering a lot of ground is a necessity to find these locations. I always ride to the distant ridge but usually am walking around for the duration of what ever event I’m photographing. My timelines smoothly go from mounted to unmounted captures. 

By walking or riding along parallel ridges, I’m able to see first and quickly compose these scenes. As I’ve always said, if I can see it in my environment, I generally can capture the scene in these high tech photon traps I use. 

Photographic Musings: 

Looking into the sun is an “edge of the envelope” activity that is best left to mirrorless cameras as I use. DSLR cameras are dangerous to do this with as there is a direct light path to your eye through the camera. Mirrorless cameras have a video screen inside of the eye piece viewer. There is NO direct light path to blind you with concentrated light from the lens. Please don’t try this with a DSLR camera. You CAN capture this with a DSLR but you have to do it without looking through the camera WHILE you are taking the image. Set up your rig before you point and don’t look through your DSLR camera at the sun… 

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: High Ridge Veiled Sunset

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Leader and a Follower

Leader and a Follower
Leader and a Follower

Leader and a Follower

(ART)

It is always better to lead than follow but it’s good to have options. An “illusion” of siamese deer. Of course this is photoshopped but I liked it enough to play with it to start with. So at any one time, one of them is the butt head in this universe? Now bear in mind here that “all work and no play makes Frank a Dull Boy”. (Now If I keep typing that page after page….. classical reference from a movie). Early spring time is always a mix of stubble and green in the hay fields. Up in the high grounds the muley eared deer do some strange things…

At any rate the deer were standing precisely in the right place for a siamese deer illusion. Admittedly, I was very sloppy with some of the cloning in this piece of ART. I built it more for fun than anything else. Over the years I’ve found a few images that meet the qualifications for this kind of work. (cartoon really). I try to work on them but perfection is a hard thing to achieve when I’m just playing around.

I still am building 4 images a day every day including photographing them. Writing this “book” that I’ve got almost 1400 pages done…..It’s a struggle at times but I keep busy and am full time working lol. These narratives are challenging by the end of the day but it’s never boring 😜

Did I mention this is ART?

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Leader and a Follower

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Communicating with the Moon

Communicating with the Moon
Communicating with the Moon

Communicating with the Moon

Moon Lollipop? Mood Docking Station? So many titles, so little space and time. I find that celestial objects follow a routine in their movements. Our companion in space has habits that humans have noticed over time. There has always been a connection between humans and the moon. I think women even more so than men. Your results may vary 🤔

Blamed for many things historically the moon has. That lunar disk has played an important role in our history and even language. “Lunatic” is derived from several languages denotes to the madness or hysteria caused by the moon. Then even from the Old English “monseoc,” implying lunatic, epileptic and “lunatic” literally translates to “moon-sick”; From the Latin word “lunaticus,” . That originally referred mostly to epilepsy and madness. Such diseases were thought to be imparted to humans. The moon was responsible for that.

The ancients certainly noticed strange human behavior coterminous with the appearance of the full moon. As a police officer in Ohio, I noticed an increase in strange events during the full moon. The scuttle butt in the station was “watch out, it’s a full moon. Interestingly, I heard the same during my years as an EMT from that group. Hearsay.

Here I have firm photographic evidence here that the moon is trying to communicate with us. As a ham radio guy, I’m always monitoring something or another but has no one has picked up Moon Magic just yet? “73” K7WIZ

Location: Bliss DInosaur ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Communicating with the Moon

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Parks School House Site

Parks School House Site
Parks School House Site

Parks School House Site

This capture caught these two young bucks standing on an old country school site. Bucks still with antlers…. (taken in January).

This is section 36 on the map of the local township. Every township has 36 square miles and is mapped by square mile sections. Section 36 is the state owned and controlled School section. Basically the law gives 1/36th of all land to the state automatically. I digress.

The little brown box to the right center of the photo, is the old oil burning stove that used to sit on the Trail Creek/Parks School. Generations of local kids went to school with this view out the back. I’ve heard stories of walking to school from those kids. There are people alive that went to that school. It is physically located about 2 miles south from our homestead as the crow flies. The building that was removed has a few signs it was there.

Other evidence, : the latent archeologist in me…

The aforementioned stove itself is an interesting antique. I’ve worked it with cameras but never liked what I got. I’ll get back to it sometime with the right light… but there are concrete foundations from that old school building, not huge and they looked like they were hand poured. Someone with a small mixer and bags kind of foundations….say 1930’s….. Those concrete chunks were pushed over the lip of and into a nearby gully where they serve as a rock which are currently being slowly naturalized by the environment. Evidence of past lives and events that will mostly be lost to history but they leave clues. It would be interesting to work this site with a metal detector eh? …

Location: just south of the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Parks School House Site

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Speeding Fine of 4 Bucks

Speeding Fine of 4 Bucks
Speeding Fine of 4 Bucks

Speeding Fine of 4 Bucks (Summer 2018)

Whimsical: First of all, I’ve never seen a group of boys hanging out on the corner that didn’t bring an “oh oh” to my mind lol. The big guy (second to the right) is actually pretty big as a Mule Deer’s ears are 22 inches roughly across. I’ve certainly seen bigger bucks. Overall a nice Muley Buck I thought.

OH, I forgot, I’m suspecting they were about to drag race here . My presence shut it down as if by a switch. Instead they walked off slowly with casual glances over their shoulder. More or less continuing to move from one of my water tanks to their grazing areas. By the looks of those bellies hanging down, the food supply is doing well. Yup chubby future hubby for some lucky girl is.

The 35 mph speed limit is just suggestion as maximum speed to them I suspect though it’s the law up here on ranch. There is about 3 miles of county road that crosses across our ground. It makes it MUCH easier to get from one end to the other for everybody up here includeing this batch. They had just left the cleared gravel

I watch well known places of wildlife activity such as watering holes we keep open all year just for wild life. (4). Usually one of them will have stock on it but it’s still open for the deer and anybody else around to use. Everybody needs a place to drink. Wildlife tend to be hard pressed in the winter to find open water.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Speeding Fine of 4 Bucks

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Mule Deer Big Buck

Mule Deer Big Buck
Mule Deer Big Buck

Mule Deer Big Buck

Boy I don’t get a chance to “zoom into” a big fellow such as this very often. This is after rut so this guy survived the hunt this year. I call this a 4×5 but there are two brow tines you can’t see in this profile that you can sure hang a ring on. There are so many ways to “classify” how “good” a buck is based on his antlers. I tend to focus at the condition of the animal and this guy is one nice buck. I’m thinking it weights 275 pounds anyway.

Big Male Mule Deer go to 330 pounds and the females go to 200 pounds. The are actually indigenous to North America and are known by those distinctive “Mule” shaped ears. The hear extremely well with those big ears. I suspect they use their sense of smell way more though to detect danger. These guys are herbivores. They are survivors of what ever killed all the MegaFauna during the Pleistocene 11000 years ago.

Biologists say that a Bucks neck will swell up as showing the Mule Deer Buck Near Rut capture. They will swell up to 50 percent larger of a circumference adding more muscle mass. This is all related of course to the Rut which is the annual fight to breed. They live in a world of scents and hormones floating in the air from the does in the group.

Scientific data indicates that this growth is caused by a big surge in testosterone to the deer. That dose of steroids makes the neck muscles get big and also causes the deer to become more aggressive. I had a close encounter with a deer in my back yard a few Novembers ago.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Mule Deer Big Buck

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Moon Roping by Frank Bliss

Moon Roping by Frank Bliss
Moon Roping by Frank Bliss

Moon Roping by Frank Bliss

When my name is included in the Title, the image is ART, usually taken from real photos . I disclose when I screw with images to any significant degree. I had fun with this one.

This Image became ART by removing 2 inches of the center hombre’s rope loop to give the illusion of it going behind the moon. The gate that provided me the photons for this capture, is our front gate. (albeit slightly re-arranged for this art work). When I screw with images I really can do anything I want but this is actually pretty true to what happened. Just a bit a rope, a little movement of the horses from their real positions and I end up with this illusion. I do like to occasionally put some art up. As I’ve said before, “all work and no play makes Frank a dull boy”.

The metal work is my original design but I did have it professionally cut with a computer controlled plasma table. We put this gate up 15 years ago at the front entrance to the Dinosaur Ranch. . There is also a T-rex on this gate but I excluded him for this particular illusion. This is ART remember :). With no rules I impose on myself to be photorealistic, I get to move, remove, replace, resize, recolor or pretty much do anything else I want to ART work. There are no limitations in the digital world. lololol (laughing maniacially). 👀😜😜

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Moon Roping by Frank Bliss

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Peacock Flower by Frank Bliss

Peacock Flower by Frank Bliss
Peacock Flower by Frank Bliss

Peacock Flower by Frank Bliss (ART) Laser Painting

In the winter blooming flowers are not common up here except in my Aquaponic greenhouse. This Amaryllis flower just started blooming but Could I Leave It Alone?…….. Of course not. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy 😜.

SO, turn off the lights at night, get a good LED photographic studio light set up (it’s wet down there lol). Front light the flower and everything else black. Then get a violet laser with a circular swirl pattern lens installed on it. (A 1 watt laser spread out or it would have burnt through in a heartbeat. The illusion of a peacock was was I was looking / working for.

I don’t get to do studio work too often. I get a few photos for a lot of work in a studio. Where in the backcountry, I spend the same time for literally hundreds of photos. Setting up little areas of zen while a lot of fun, creating such illusionary scenes. There are so many already out in the world just waiting for us to see them. Humans are generalists, as a result, miss the little things taking in the whole scene instead. Photographers and Artists tend to “Zoom” in to those areas in the scene that have artistic attributes / qualities. I go out into the world and have to ignore the things I see to get other things done lol. Even I catch myself without the right camera in my hand lolol. (rule one of Photography, have a camera with you).

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Peacock Flower by Frank Bliss

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Sunlit Buck Chewing Grass

Sunlit Buck Chewing Grass
Sunlit Buck Chewing Grass

Sunlit Buck Chewing Grass

I know this deer as “Goal Post” I’ve watched him grow up since he was a fawn. He is really obvious as he is missing his brow tine over his right eye. He has already shed his winter coat as he’s looking quite well groomed here. Goal Post is 4 years old here from last spring 2019. He will be 5 in the spring. It will be interesting to see if grows much bigger antlers this year. He has never grown in that brow tine though. He just doesn’t have it in him I think lol.

Familiarity of myself with deer is a photographic asset for me. . His herd is one of several different groups I have been able “get used to me”. I have in the past been able to drive my rigs right into the herd without spooking the group. Intermingling with herds of deer is a very interesting activity to say the least lol. I just traded in my Jeep Grand Cherokee they were used to. Now I drive a Ford F150 Raptor (all black) which they don’t know from Adam. We will see if they are tolerant of the vehicle or not. I’m betting that it’s the way I approach the herd rather than the particular vehicle. I do my best to drive up like a grazing animal. Move, stop for a while, turn a bit, move, stop, move etc. rinse and repeat.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands “Wyotana”.

Title: Sunlit Buck Chewing Grass

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Volcanic Rainbow Turtle Butte

Volcanic Rainbow Turtle Butte
Volcanic Rainbow Turtle Butte

Volcanic Rainbow Turtle Butte (a little out of season).

Rainstorms were moving through the area this late fall day. This was before the first frosts. That seems a long time ago sequestered in the house most of the day. Various levels of Cabin Fever begins to creep into your psyche. Most ranchers get outside enough and maybe some light to keep them sane. A lot of times their wives go first unless they get out too. You’ve got to get some sunlight during the winter.

Sort of a cheap “Skittles™| knock off I’m thinking lolol. Rainbows are not fixed objects but will move as you move across the landscape. (Did you know that?). If you jump in a car and stay sunward of rain shafts in sunlight, you’ll have a moving rainbow. So to find the place to line this up you have to travel. I’m glad the Sun wasn’t much right (behind me) as I would have run out of ridge and gone over a cliff lolol. That has happened to more than few photographers

I all that conical / pyramidal butte “Turtle Butte”. In this late summer shot, you can see the normally mild mannered wanna be volcano, spew rainbows everywhere. Now we know where all the rainbows came from. They sky is stocking up. Makes sense. That butte is EXACTLY on the Wyoming/Montana border. That border is PRECISELY 1/2 way in between the Equator and the North Pole.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Volcanic Rainbow Turtle Butte

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Big Horns Big Antlers

Big Horns Big Antlers
Big Horns Big Antlers

Big Horns Big Antlers

The Big Horn Mountain Chain is one of the largest ranges in Wyoming. Two peaks exceed 13,000 feet in elevation. The far ridge under the twilight sky is a ways out at 130 miles from camera.

Photographic Musings:

Nice buck… it was very low light. To freeze him in space and time, you need at least 1/200th second. It was very dark, you either give up Fstop (depth of focus) or ISO (camera sensitivity) I gave up f-stop and thusly the mountains in the distance are slightly out of focus. Getting a longer depth of focus is what Fstop does along with either letting in more light or taking it away with higher F-stop numbers.

Geologic Musings.

I live and work higher in elevation that most of the ground between here and there. Obviously that is line of sight. That ground in between is called the “Powder River Basin”. Coal from here generates 30 percent of the electricity we use in the country. Wyoming is a HUGE clean coal producing state.

The coal formed there because the WAVE that the mountains and the adjacent basin make. (The earths crust was crushed east/west to make a wave). Erosion wore the much bigger mountains down to where they are today, filling up that basin with alluvial fan carried sediments. Traveling all the way to the edge of my ranch, those alluvial fans covered/filled up that sedimentary basin (think bathtub at the base of the mountains). Lots of swampy conditions in the topographic low area/basin occurred back in the Paleogene to allow coal formation. All the surface geology between my ranch and the mountains is all about things washing off the Big Horn Mountains.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana)

Title: Big Horns Big Antlers

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Just the Highlights Buck

Just the Highlights Buck
Just the Highlights Buck

Just the Highlights Buck

I was able to maneuver around on this buck and get him in the “right position”. . The glare from the sun is very significant in this rarefied light environment. Most cameras would wash out everything. You have to love Sony Alphas… I was working the “Shadow line”. I find where the shadow of the hillside is and “go” there. Adjust for where the deer is and move backwards with the shadow as the sun sets. (the horizon is actually rising at sunset remember ).

Being able to maneuver around with the deer being unconcerned of course is the key to this. In this particular case, I was in a Jeep. I have several sessions similar to this where I was working a parallel ridge several hundred yards away. The deer will even tolerate me away from my vehicle as long as I dress the part and mostly hide my form. I generally am dressed in heavy camo of various kinds depending on the day and how wet it is. I always obscure my human form. I’m still noisy and smelly to them though. Basically I’ve achieved “just another grazer” status with this group. I left them, they didn’t run away from me. If fact I stopped and talked to another rancher down on the county road and pointed them out up on the hill. A rare encounter on a very backcountry road.

We don’t have drive by shootings but we do have a few drive by shoutings up here 😝

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Just the Highlights Buck

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Watching over the Deer Herd

Watching over the Deer Herd
Watching over the Deer Herd

Watching over the Deer Herd (Natural Spirit in the Sky). This is NOT art and is Natural as I photographed it. It’s a total anthropomorphic illusion totally done by mother nature. Border Magic occurs..

I love it when an old man in the clouds is overlooking a herd of mule deer up here in the borderlands. Wouldn’t be the first time (chuckles) Spirits in the sky, particular when they are natural will ALWAYS get my attention. Click !. It lasted about a minute then morphed into something not so anthropomorphic lolol.

Heavily Veiled this sunrise was. I was a few hundred yards out. I’ve been able to drive in among this group but I was on another mission that morning. The Light was my target, not deer closeups in low light… The deer herd is one that frequents this hay field for the Alfalfa that grows there. Water is nearby/running. Isolated and peaceful up there. It’s a wonderful place. The trick is to get the local deer herd familiar with your presence. They don’t see a lot of cars/rigs there. So me driving up and moving VERY slowly across a field stop and go. Acting like I’m grazing, eventually wins them over. In 20 minutes I could have been inside the herd like I was just another cow on the prairie.

This was captured mid spring 2019 and I just found the image buried in an”Images to finish” folder. Sitting nested with 1000’s of untouched images that I pulled for eventual evaluation over the last year or so. Somehow this one got past me for 8 months before I re-discovered the capture a week ago. The main problem with having literally years of work already “in the can” is that sooner or later one has to finish those images lolol. I’m stoic about it. My OCD will get them all done over time. Problem is I keep going out and capturing more each day mostly lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Watching over the Deer Herd

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Double Mint Bucks

Double Mint Bucks
Double Mint Bucks

Double Mint Bucks

Double Your Pleasure, Double your Fun with Double Mint, Doublle Mint, Double Mint Bucks. (commercial Jingle rolls around in your head lol)

I caught these two brothers crossing the country road. I actually “know” these two having watched them grow up from fawns. One is 4 and the other is 3 years old. Running into them often around the ranch, they have seen me so much that they are “Fairly tolerant” of my old Jeep (anyway). I haven’t seen them since my new ride arrived. No clue how they will react to the new rig. I suspect that they will not let me get too close for a while? Familiarity is a big deal with deer. My old Jeep never pushed or pressured them. They just don’t know that about the new bigger black truck.

I tried really hard to move more to my right. That would have better nest those antlers. . They weren’t in the mood for sitting still for me. Deer are like photographing a 2 year old human. They are very photographic but they don’t necessarily want to sit still for you lolol. These two are thick as thieves they are. “The deer on the right is called goal post and is missing his left brow tine. A male mule deer’s ears are 22 inches wide. I’m curious as to how large he will be next spring but he is starting to put on some neck mass.

These guys with the award for synchronized posing certainly. I’m not sure how they could get more alike without me cloning them in the digital darkroom lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana)

Title: Double Mint Bucks

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Bucks Wrestling During Rut

Bucks Wrestling During Rut
Bucks Wrestling During Rut

Bucks Wrestling During Rut

The two hoodlum mule deer were rutting away on a nice warm morning in the late November sun. There is a lot of effort involved in pushing against another high power to weight individual. These two are not monsters but they are serious about what they are doing. There are females gathered nearby with a bigger buck in charge (more or less for that time). Itinerant Bucks come through ranging quite a few miles in their travels.

The male these guys were training for had a nice herd of females numbering 15 or so. I suspect there will be others besides these two clowns trying to take them away. A lot of itinerant bucks walk through and they have a pretty big range which they can cover quickly. Some of those are bigger than these two by far. Ultimately, the bigger necks and musculature wins the fight but antler size WOWS the gals….

I had a buck try to run me down in my backyard one night in November 2012. It’s a long story but both of us walked away relatively unhurt. I definitely came out of it better than the deer did but he survived too lolol. This event was the causation of me getting serious about building a deer resistant fence around our entire compound. I haven’t had a deer eat my flowers for several years. Young trees survive, it’s a miracle cure for deer pressure.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Bucks Wrestling During Rut

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Perspective Sunset Lens Illusion

Perspective Sunset Lens Illusion
Perspective Sunset Lens Illusion

Perspective Sunset Lens Illusion

I present a Golden Hour Veiled Sunset set against a snowy corral / pasture pipe fence line. Smooth curves are everywhere and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t line up the sun with the gate precisely. Well I could but I wouldn’t have gotten all these curves / waves lololol. My OCD is amiss 😜. I’m always looking for unusual angles. The smooth curves of the snow banks combined with the fence’s waves here fall under oddball for sure.

Corrals built this way will last a while. That is 3 inch drilling well stem pipe interlocked and screwed / welded in place as the frame. The fence is all made of solid steel sucker rod from old oil wells. It’s an inch across and pretty tough as it is all thick solid iron. Not much gets through this kind of fence arrangement. I’m pretty sure it will last 1000 years in this low water / precipitation environment unless someone tears it down with heavy equipment and a torch .

Photographic Musings:

About 1/2 of this illusion is the actual topography / landscape here but the rest is all about a really wide lens. Wide lenses distort on the edges and by using a “tilt/shift” lens, you can manipulate the distortion by enhancing it or removing it. Much more on the left than the right of the frame. THe lens actually moves either side to side on the camera body. This moves the “Sweet spot” of a good lens right or left on the camera sensor. It also moves edge of lens distortion. Google “Tilt Shift Lens”

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Perspective Sunset Lens Illusion

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Mule Deer Antler Nesting

Mule Deer Antler Nesting
Mule Deer Antler Nesting

Mule Deer Antler Nesting

This image takes a little examination to figure out whats going on lol. I’m always looking for nested antlers images. Getting deer to line up properly is way above my pay grade. Usually only a deal with “Sneaky Pete” will get deer to take direction.👀 Occasionally I get lucky and can move to just the right spot to take the image. It would be typical for one or the other deer to be moving but not as fast as the moment of their alignment which is fleeting. Usually I don’t have enough time and can’t get the camera set just so. Moments like this last a few seconds at best. Catching unique moments in space and time is the still photographers job. Otherwise we’d be shooting a movie lolol. (I am not and will never be a videographer).

Taken a last year about the same day so not as much snow cover in this capture. Currently the ground continues accumulating snow for the winter… Totally covered by 9 inches or so of snow flat with bigger drifts out in the backcountry. Still waiting (as I type this) for my new ford f-150 that is replacing my 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. My vehicles play a significant roll in my photography. Being agile and fast in moving from place to place gives me more opportunity to chase light. Light is faster of course but I can predict where it’s going to be and get there first. 😜😜

I spent two hours last Sunday morning (since this posts a week after I write it) clearing my driveway. That’s pretty fast considering how much snow has fallen the year. More importantly most of the fall snow that has fallen for the last month hasn’t melted much. It much harder for the wildlings to get their food grazing. Most ungulates paw the ground to get to grass or just eat sage like Pronghorn do. Running water is the game though. Animals like these bucks are attracted to any open water in this spell of below freezing weather.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana) 2:1 Aspect Ratio to 40 inches.
Title: Mule Deer Antler Nesting

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Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion
Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

SATIRE:

So I wake up the other morning and much to my surprise, was a local pyramidal hillock that was blowing it’s top. The steam was rising, the cauldron boiling. I anticipate pyroclastic flows, lahars, glowing red hot clouds and other volcanic manifestations similar to what buried Pompeii. Ash should start falling any moment. Maybe “Sneaky Pete” the windmill will save the day and blow the ash away…

Back to my normal programming: Geologic Musings:

OK, this is NOT a volcano. It takes a properly positioned camera lol. Those are normal clouds up in the sky. Yellowstone is not blowing up. The Devil’s Tower/Missouri Butte Volcanic Neck field about 50 miles to my southeast has not reactivated. No, the Laramide Orogeny has not started back up just yet.

That Butte (called Mitten Butte), is made of layers of river sands stacked on top of one another. The volcanic shape is a result of a hard cap rock which resisted erosion better than every thing else between it and myself. All that rock has been removed by erosion. It is a erosive remnant of all the material that used to surround the hill. Hundreds of feet if not thousands of feet (depending on your location) of sediment has been removed around here. Remember Devils Tower? That used to be a mile or so deep. Now it sticks up 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. That river system essentially removed enough material to expose the harder tower. Same process here except just the top of the hill is harder rock.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Mitten Butte Volcano Illusion

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Sunset Across the Little Powder River Valley

Sunset Across the Little Powder River Valley
Sunset Across the Little Powder River Valley

This cool Sunset across the Little Powder River Valley with the Sun lighting up the fog/inversion layer was quite hard to capture. The sun was actually quite bright in the sky and the fog barely illuminated. Tough to bring out of the shadow (low exposure area)…
These Sony Alpha 7 Cameras are high/low light monsters. I strongly suggest one if your doing sunrises/sunset photography.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Overlooking Wyoming’s Inland Sea (Illusion)

Overlooking Wyoming's Inland Sea (Illusion)
Overlooking Wyoming's Inland Sea (Illusion)

With the Illusion of overlooking an Inland sea, our Three Wise Cows try to figure out how that illusionary ocean got all lit up lolol. What a night that was.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Moon Docking Station

Moon Docking Station
Moon Docking Station

I finally located a rare Moon Docking Station here in the backcountry up in the borderlands. I caught the moon pulling up just ready to take on fuel for it’s continued journey up to it’s zenith. It’s all down hill from there though and back of the bus coasting😂 I bet it get good milage for that part of the trip 🙂 (Actually the earth does most of the spinning…..
Location of the docking station: Somewhere near the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands..