MontanaWednesday Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on December 10, 2020November 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

SmokeBow Over Wyotana Backcountry

Probably the last serious rainbow of the 2020 was this late “Golden Hour” spectral display a few weeks ago as this posts. The Sun over my shoulder was HEAVILY Smoke Pall filtered giving the marked color cast displayed here. The total lack of blue light being obvious in the refracted spectrum. All of that was absorbed by the smoke. Missing the blue/indio components gives a very odd feeling to the scene live real time. I’ve said before it reminds me of the solar eclipse in 2017 that went through the area. This is certainly one of the more extreme rainbows I’ve ever seen. There will be more of this event as it flows through my workstation.

This capture of course is a long telephoto image right into the left leg of a very tall rainbow. Late day rainbows are closer to a perfect 1/2 of a circle. From the air rainbows are circles with your shadow in the center. On the ground though, your limited to half of the circle at most. But as such sunset rainbows are relatively HUGE compared to mid to afternoon rainbows. Mid-day rainbows are wide but not tall. This one was wide AND tall. This was right at the height of the smoke generation from the west coast fires as seen here almost exactly on the border of Wyoming / Montana. This rainbow’s leg itself spans the actual borderline from my perspective lol. Exactly 1/2 way between the North Pole and the Equator it’s marks the spot.

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

Title: SmokeBow Over Wyotana Backcountry

Posted on December 10, 2020November 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Late Night Feeding (Shhhhh)

Always grainy the pitch black capture of a Game Trail Cameral (GTC) is problematic to me. I have to look through thousands of blurry images to find one this good but…. None the less, they are always candid and without prejudice by the actors. They are always behaving naturally for those auto photon capture boxes. It takes a flash of an Infra-red LED panel to illuminate the scene. Our human eyes are incapable of seeing in this part of the light spectrum in the Infra-red band. The deer aren’t usually aware that something happened. Different cameras make different amounts of noise so sometimes they look surprised lol.

Knowing the characteristics of how the flash works on particular brands of cameras is a big deal I’m finding out. Placement of the cameras should always be that the “funnels’ one might channel the animals into the optimal flash exposure area. Just like it did here. If they would have been closer, they would have been white like the stick in the foreground. Take note where the trails are and set the camera back 15 feet for most medium settings from where you think the animals are going to be. You have a 5 foot on either side of that (generally) for sloppp.

Placement of these GTC’s is everything. It’s really the only control of the image you have is your composition and analysis of the scene. You have to figure out where everybody walks and cover that area sufficiently. Then just stand back for a few weeks to months and see what happened there.

I planted 8 cameras of the 17 that I just serviced yesterday/this am. 9 to go. I’m planting all with fresh batteries that should last the winter. If you avoid compositions where wind blows grass or branches in front of the lens, your batteries will last a year. If cattle mull around your cameras, the batteries will last a week lolol. I won’t be able to get to most of these cameras until the snow melts in the spring.

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

Title: Late Night Feeding (Shhhhh)

Posted on October 5, 2020September 23, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Full Smokey Moon Rising

Wednesday Moon Day:

Close Far Perspectives are something I haven’t worked recently. The smoke plumes from western fires clogging up my horizons to anything but the sun. I get only a few terminator crossings a month any to photograph the rising lunar disk coterminous with the sun still being up (even a little like this). The dark blue you see here is seconds away from turning black in the camera. The is the edge of the envelope for what this technology can do. The silhouette would soon be fading into the black sky in minutes.

Wonderful smokey color that night though we weren’t particularly under Pall at that moment. Particulates in the higher air is likely to blame for this hue. Almost salmon but with just a tinge of red. Hard to find such things in archives of my travels.

Heads Up!… The Moon while on schedule for once a month, but October 2020 will have two. The first on October 1st, and the second on October 31st. That rarity is what coined the phrase “once in a blue moon” back in 1821, according to the Farmer’s Almanac. The “standardized” explanation of the blue moon wasn’t defined “officially” August 1937 or so the story goes… I will work both moons in October assuming the weather window to their light opens for me to capture in my photon capture boxes. Rule number 112 of photography is: no window, no images… That one is fixed in the rules of the universe I’m afraid lolol.

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

Title: Full Smokey Moon Rising

Posted on October 5, 2020September 23, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Moon Over the Mountains

Starting with the first ridge about 10 miles down range. That would be the furthest west of the ridges in the Prairie Dog Hills. Between the first ridge and the last ridge here is 25 miles. The moon is a little further away at 1.3 light seconds for light to travel from there to here. That exact number depends on whether the moon is closer or further away in it’s elliptical orbit around the earth. The terms apogee and perigee come to mind to describe the furthest away and closest the moon is to the earth. A difference of about 25,000 miles (significant if your walking).

This particular morning was one of the few I got to work on that months moon’s timeline. I like to have both the moon AND the sun up behind me to get landscapes like this. There are only about 3-4 terminator crossings a month that I can work this kind of scene. Rarely do I see everything cooperating as this to get a wonderful color pallet on a morning landscape. They are usually TOO red for my taste. This is just about right to the lighting several minutes after sunrise. At most I get 15 – 20 minutes of the actual full moon above the horizon coterminously with the sun. A photographer has to work fast. It’s a bad time for batteries to go down lolol.

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

Title: Moon Over the Mountains

Posted on September 9, 2020September 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Furrow Orb Weaver Underside

So I’m walking around the homestead. It was the last of the reasonable summer evenings. A bit cool. By “happenstance” I was carrying a specialized 2 foot long macro lens. It has a ring of LED lights around it’s periphery. This requires I carry an external battery back to run it in my pocket. You can NEVER have enough light to capture bugs with a Macro camera. More light = Deeper field of focus possible. Hand held capture.

Starting out, I was thinking to myself…what’s out tonight? I used the LED at the end of the lens like a flashlight (which is basically is). Looking for “Close and Personal” creatures out in the dark. Fortunately for me, this fully mature Arachnid appeared floating in mid air near an outdoor light. An old friend….. Catching bugs is a good profession. I’m glad this fellow has a job. It’s ventral view of course with it’s spinerette and the “Alien” (ET) pattern on it’s Abdomen lol.

In this Ultra Close up, I’m using a 2x macro and I’m about an inch from it to get this Macro shot. I suspect it was chilling down at the time and a little slow with summer hot nights behind us now. Well fed it looks. I’ve seen the many webs it’s been building all summer. You either love or hate these guys. Enjoy those hairy legs either way.

Taxonomy: (I believe the ID is correct).

Larinioides patagiatus, sometimes referred to as “furrow orb weavers”
Family: Araneidae / Genus: Larinioides

Larinioides patagiatus (Clerck, 1757)

These guys get around. Found in: North America, Europe, Turkey, Russia (Europe to Far East), Central Asia.

These are ubiquitous throughout Wyoming

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Furrow Orb Weaver Underside

Posted on September 2, 2020August 25, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Pronghorn Herd on the Plains

Milling about, generally moving a bit to the north, the group was grazing a little. generally they were uneasy but I don’t think it was me they were upset about. I find that groups of these guys are the definition of jumpy lol. This perspective is through a long lens camera sideways. I’m well outside their “line in the sand” that get’s them nervous. I was stopped, engine off. Watching them for about 5 minutes at this point. It was more like they were waiting for something to happen. Maybe me moving on… hard to know.

That last ridge is known as “The Red Hills”. This was taken a few weeks ago as this posts. Still at the very beginning of some lighter smokey days. It got WAY worse later the next day. The normally crystal clear view to the “Red Hill’ turned to haze by the massive fires out west.

Visibility was 10 miles tonight as I worked the smokey sunset again driving ridges in the backcountry. It’s getting close to dense fog kind of visual occlusion as I type this. The air is just plain unhealthy. I’m not sure if “Clever Girl” even likes it. Might have to change the air filter sooner driving around in this forest fire soup. The sun disappeared tonight long before it hit the horizon. The surface smoke totally obscuring the solar disk. It was last seen around “Sneaky Pete” tonight.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands.

Title: Pronghorn Herd on the Plains

Posted on August 19, 2020August 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Sunset for Pariedoliacs

I like to end most days with a photo of a sunset. This is from about 10 days before the image actually publishes on line. I am currently that far ahead in setting up my post. I hope you enjoy the evening. Be safe all.

Well if you see figures/shapes/forms in clouds, this image is fodder for your imagination. I’ve got several anthropomorphic figures floating around in my head from this image. I saw it at the time and thought it worthy of your time. Primarily I can imagine a woman on her elbows crawling but you might go with a lamb or some other figure. Whats nifty about this tendency is that no one really constructs the same vision inside their head. The next person is always going to see something different. The snake eye in the upper right just caught my eye too. Maybe it’s a rabbit: lolol.

This is a Photo taken across the 40 miles of the Little Powder River Valley from Wyoming into Montana. I’m sitting on the west side of the pass on Trail Creek Road in Wyoming. The border is 4 miles to my right.

What a long afternoon of photography this day ended with. Near the end of this timeline, I had been out for 3 hours following a Mesocyclone across the landscape. No rainbows this day though. Only lightning and serious weather to deal with to our south. The sun stayed away till the end.

Location: The Pass on Trail Creek Road To Rockypoint Wyoming USA.

Title: Sunset for Pariedoliacs

Posted on August 12, 2020August 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Doe Fawn Nuzzle

When you watch a mother deer with her fawn, you can see the love. They interact constantly. Once the novelty of me being within telephoto range has passed, natural behavior starts to return. No more suspicion of the intrusion into their world remains as I watch the mother reach over and nuzzle her baby. I’m not so sure the fawn was stressed in the least. I’m thinking the mother was reassuring herself that the fawn was OK. This was at least 5 minutes after I started photographing them. I’m doubting she was very stressed as the photo session continued for at least another 1/2 hour. I drove off leaving them approximately in the same place as when I drove up. I can usually do this kind of work without chasing them off.

If I scare animals (bad plan). I don’t get to photograph them very long and then only their backsides as they run away. So stealth, patience and don’t push are my techniques.

These guys way laid me on the way to photograph a sunset. I often randomly encounter wild animals on my trips around the ranch. I have been known (rarely) to go up a hill with a FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) high resolution thermal viewer looking for body heat. It is rare I LOOK to find animals to photograph. They almost always just appear during my daily chores and photographic trips. I consider myself a landscape photographer even as all these critter photos grace my portfolio.

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

Title: Doe Fawn Nuzzle

Posted on August 12, 2020August 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Foxy Lady Second Look

This was a lucky random encounter while coming back from photographing the sunrise. I almost never see these guys so it’s a rare capture for me. About 5:49, the sun had just risen. Positioned perfectly with the sun behind me. The Fox had to strain to see into the bright sun. The wind was blowing toward me from him so I was a ghost. Pretty much he knew something was there. He was checking out the apparition in the glare.

The Red Fox / Grey fox debate is for another post down the road. I “Believe” this is a red fox. I can’t seen the tail tip. It’s not an insignificant discussion since the Grey and Red Fox are different Genera of Canid entirely. Not just two different species. Vulpes vulpes is the scientific name if it is a Red Fox. Lots of information out there.

At the same time 30 feet to the right was a spotted mule deer fawn watching this guy walk across the pasture in front of him. I was too close to get them both in the same frame. I would have LOVED to have had them walk up and touch noses lolol. I’d have gotten it . I bet it’s happened before. Neither species has anything to fear from the other.

These guys are low frequency sound specialists. They can hear rodents scurrying/digging about underground or under snow. I consider them an asset keeping down the numbers of rodents. I’ve never had a fox take a domerstic bird out of my barnyard. I’ve cared for a flock over 18 years. No losses by Fox that I’m aware of. They really don’t like my electric fence. They are however, watering in one of my stock tanks though so I’ll probably see him again. All my Game Trail Cameras of these guys are blurred. They tend to move along.

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

Title: Foxy Lady Second Look