ScienceThursday Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on August 20, 2020August 12, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Moon Hanging with Mars

Here’s a Close / Far Perspective for you. Moon Close, Mars Far…(ish). If you can full screen this, the moon is pretty sharp here….Good seeing that night.

There was an internet/Facebook meme that the Moon and Mars would be in the sky together with a GIANT Mars. Well here they are…. Mars was supposed to be the size of the moon. Darn it….. So disappointed…😜

Captured is the reality, only a “little” different than the meme circulating around with two big globes in the sky. From the human eye perspective this is a giant mars. (that little red dot far right frame). The moon getting close in the sky to mars was obvious looking up that evening. I don’t work night skies very much photographically as it’s off schedule to me. I get jet lag easily lol.

At any rate, I don’t see opportunity to take a planet and our moon in the same frame too often. Well I could zoom WAY back to be able to actually fit them in the frame lol. Only when a planet is close can you do this. The dynamic range difference between the bright moon and the little dim mars is tough to pull out of the dark.

Mars closes approach to earth will be on October 6th 2020 at only 38.6 million miles away. The moon is currently 224,800 miles out which is relatively close I suppose. It does indeed appear larger than it normally would further away lol. Not QUITE the same apparent size as our orbiting partner.. So if you read it on an internet meme, you might want to initially question the information.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Well somewhat over it anyway)

Title: Moon Hanging with Mars

Posted on July 30, 2020July 22, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wandering Out of the Woods

This is a hybrid technique photo of the Comet Neowise. Here seen stumbling out of the woods. He was lost in there for a while while I was driving to get to this remote location. At least it’s going downhill and after a rough few weeks around the “celestial block” , it obviously needed the gravity assist. Only a three mile diameter ball of ice/rock/dust. They are more like a big hard snowball with some gravel mixed in for good measure. Anybody ever get into one of those snowball fights? Boys growing up do funny things. Survived too…

The lighting here at “Look out Butte” is my way of “painting with light” before the camera. Used a flashlight to systematically bathe the landscape with light from the led’s. Then I tapped my brake lights a few times for just that tint of red in the otherwise brown grass. With a flashlight you highlight what you want. Learning how much to use is the trick here. I corrected for overexposure in the digital darkroom. I tried several different colored flashlights as well. Interesting variations on a theme. I have yet to work on those. Hybrid as I said. Lots of work to get the lighting right with multiple attempts each slightly different. Fun exercise with this often taken comet these days. Challenging.. 😄 📸

Photographic Musings:

Those far trees are at least 200 yards out. 20 second time exposure. f4 lens. 22mm ISO (what ever it takes). F18. Tricky with pointing flashlights over 20 long seconds of open shutter. I hit the Snag twice intentionally with the thumb switched Surefire Flashlight. Made it stand out as planned. I can as I do it keep track where I’ve exposed to LED light mentally. One has to sort of wing it to do this. Wish I could explain better but my memory works in strange ways with images. I’m shooting this out of my Raptors drivers window mounted tripod. (Clamp) It has to be a calm night to do that in a vehicle. The wind profile of a Ford Truck is “enough”. Otherwise a sandbagged tripod is needed sometimes lol.

This spot is about 100 yards from the exact Montana/Wyoming border. 45 degrees north Latitude. Significantly close to 1/2 way between the North Pole and the Equator. This image is looking across that border. Almost straight north at this capture.

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

Title: Wandering Out of the Woods

Posted on July 23, 2020July 18, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Neowise Against the Star Field

As with most of my work finished on a big computer monitor, full screen is preferred. Click the image to enlarge.

I’m always trying to experiment with different lighting when I do night time exposures. Here I used my yellow flashing light on the top of my Raptor (I often block backcountry roads for 10’s of minutes at a time so I like a warming strobe). So the flashing strobe is like a flash bulb but in yellow. Of course we are in a drought and the grass is brown anyway. The color cast added to the scene I thought for the Close/far perspective. I have another version of this with LED white light. Just as this, the suffuse foreground lighting diminished up the hill. Stay tuned for that image.

The star field is just about properly exposed, sharp and well populated. Interestingly, the longer you leave open the shutter, the more stars that keep appearing. Our sky here on the Montana/Wyoming border 70 miles from the nearest bright city is as dark as the North Atlantic Ocean according to NASA. One of the darkest skies in the United States. If you have a sensitive camera and a steady surface you can just about fill the frame with stars. There is close to 1000 visible in this photo alone.

When you are leaving the shutter open for 10-15 seconds at a time, ANY movement of the truck the camera is mounted on will ruin the image. It was periodically gusty during this shoot. Therefore MOST of the images I took during this timeline were ruined by the movement. No fixing 1000 stars with blur tails. Ground tripods with really long lenses are better than vehicles due to the smaller wind profile.

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

Title: Neowise Against the Star Field

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

Little Bastards Jumping About

This fellow makes up in numbers what they lack in individuality. They all to a one are ravenous. I have seen more “grasshoppers” this year than any other in the last 2 decades. I’m thinking back that I’ve never seen them as thick as they are this year. Having said that, I’ve seen photos of some of the clouds of Locusts eating an 80 acre farm in 15 minutes and some of these swarms are the size of big cities. Asia, India, Saudi, Africa are all having MAJOR issues at the moment. Major famines in those regions may be expected. I’ve heard the US is expecting a major corn crop… We might feed a majority of the planet if we do. Conditions are tough out there world wide.

I still have a yard, and even some green grass. Mostly all the local ranchers are done haying this year with the dryness. It’s not worth the fuel to swath and bale up the sparse grass. I’m not versed on grasshopper biology other than the fundamentals. Isn’t it funny how all of us paid attention to how but not why during those complex high school biology lectures. My undergraduate is a double major “Geobiology”. I could tell you something about fossilization of grasshoppers but not so much their life cycle.

I could google it but then I’d deny you from the same pleasure. Plus you’d get way more info than my distilled version. Google makes us all seem like our IQ’s are 20 points higher than they are. Still knowing how to search then what to do with the information you gather is the game. ….

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

Title: Little Bastards Jumping About

Posted on June 4, 2020May 26, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Belt of Venus across Mesocyclone

The sunset main show over my shoulder is usually yellow (ish) orange or red. This sunset backshow spread across a huge Mesocyclone storm is Pink. This pink band is called the “Belt of Venus” which is often on going behind you watching a sunset. More so up here in the high ridges of the Montana / Wyoming borderlands. It you don’t turn around now and then, you miss this show. This one was fairly hard to miss though lol. These storms can be 100 miles across. I’d estimate this one is about 100 miles distant from my camera. You can see a LONG ways from the tops of the ridges around this ranch.

Your actually seeing the pink band (red light) surviving the long trip through the earth’s curved atmospherics lens. The storm colorized by that most tortured light shows the gradients well. The Blue Line / Shadow UNDER the Pink is the Shadow of the earths horizon. As the sun sets in this time line, that blue band grows upward covering the storm as the sun drops further below the opposite horizon behind me. The top of the storm is still white as the light that high still has it’s blue components unfettered by the atmosphere. The storm is an ultimate projector screen for the light shone on it from our star. Color banding courtesy of mother nature. 👀🤘📷

Several image from this particular evening made it through the “sieve” I use to determine which photo to work on. They will work their way into my portfolio with time. I’m about 8 days from taking a photo to publishing the page with the narrative in my current work flow. During this spring I’ve been finishing 4 photos a day. I finished 6 a day most of the winter. I don’t think I can do that to my current standards this winter. We will see…

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Belt of Venus across Mesocyclone

Posted on June 4, 2020May 26, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Might Be Pregnant Think?

It is fairly unusual for a Pronghorn of any sex to walk toward the camera directly. This one is a doe. I can count on one hand the number of images I have even similar to this posture. Mostly visiting photographers see their butts heading out. Oddly, she was literally walking directly toward me for some distance. Must be near sighted… Or that Black pickup looked like an angus lol.

I would indicate though that if there isn’t triplets in there, I’d say she is going to have quads. Technically this might be the biggest “Fastest” land animal in North America. She might have been a little not fast enough last fall. I will tell you with certainty that she is not as quick as she was last year before that Buck got involved. I’m really not sure if she is aware of the fact that that “coat makes her butt look big”. I’m not going to tell her. A professional has to maintain appropriate relationships with photographic subjects after all.😇📷

I see so many Pronghorn each year I can’t keep track of individual does but this one seems familiar with me anyway. She looks pretty scraggly but that is only because she is shedding in clumps of fur. She’s perfectly healthy. Most Pronghorn in cattle country have big chunks of hair off their back as going under barbed wire fences at 30 mph has it’s draw “backs”. I’ve seen those scars get infected before but it’s not that common such that it kills them from it. It’s only known in the Presidential “Book of Secrets” why they prefer to go under fencing rather than over like every other ungulate in North America. 😜👀

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

Title: Might Be Pregnant Think?

Posted on May 14, 2020May 7, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Heron Mated Pair Nested

Great Blue Herons are not common birds here on the high plains but they do come to roost and breed each spring. Our ranches wetlands have our share of Heron Breeding Pairs. These two are sitting in a fixed up nest that still remained from the year(s) before. Breeding/Nesting in the high branches of Cottonwoods is a common thing to see up here for Herons. The Cottonwoods line water ways and courses in the borderlands of Wyoming/Montana. Tall and safe from any climbing creatures, they set up a home perched way up there. There were sitting birds in all the nests this eventing this was the only parent returning in light I could catch him in. Later was too dark to catch any action.

Absent all winter having migrated to warmer climes, they returned a month ago to start nesting. . These guys were also a football field away from the vantage I had on an adjacent ridge to get this level look at the tree tops. Add a very long lens and you get “up close and personal” if you will. Early on I can see most of the nesting in this 1/8 long mile extended cottonwood tree line. Habitants last year included a great horned owl and chick in addition to the Heron Rookery… I love this place’s diversity of subject matter. Raptors fly about harassing the Great Blue Herons.

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

Title: Heron Mated Pair Nested

Posted on May 13, 2020May 7, 2020 by Frank Bliss

40 mile Pronghorn Perspective

Talk about a long landscape.. This is a VERY long shot… The Pronghorn here (all Males) are traveling but were nice enough to frame themselves at this remote ranch gate. The first ridge out in the “Prairie Dog Hills” is 10 miles distant from my camera. The “Red Hills” off in the distance are 40 miles away from the lens.

It’s obvious that Spring has Sprung. The grass is turning green. It is rocket fuel for the animals that have been eating brown grass all winter. Green season is one of birth and new growth up in a harsh country of long winters and frozen climate. These males survived the long winter this year.

Photographic Musings:

Under this lighting condition, I was lucky to get as much detail as I did. The effect of extreme distance is with a REALLY long telephoto, is that even objects a mile away are in a different focal plain that the distant mountains. I had to resort to a low F-stop number to open up the aperture in the lens to let way more light in. The dark conditions just before the sunrise were such that deep focus was not an option while still capturing moving animals with no blur. I had to cave into the light and use the evil low f-stop number for a long shot. I really don’t like to do that. Rule #2 of Photography is to : “Get the Photo”.

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

Title: 40 mile Pronghorn Perspective

Posted on May 8, 2020April 30, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Rainbow over Parks Road

The intersection of Parks Rd and Trail Creek about 4 miles south of the Montana / Wyoming border is in the distance. I’m about a mile from that crossroads for this shot. The Pronghorn as a matter of principle decided to cross in front of me. They do this to show off. I was pursuing the rainbow the road was leading to. Of course rainbows are tough to catch up to since they move as you move lolol. BUT I find that there are rainbows images and then there are rainbow IMAGES.

Gravel Wyotana backcountry roads are always exciting in what you will come across. I had stopped to to capture the rainbow lining up with the road of course. I saw this Pronghorn, anticipated her path and waited patiently as she took her sweet time wandering across. There is a HUGE network of gravel backcountry roads in this country. The closest asphalt road to that intersection is about 9 miles to the right (looking south east here). The setting sun was REALLY low on the horizon for this capture as I initially working the sunset of course. I randomly run into animal encounters regularly in this country. More pronghorn per square mile than people here.

There is no hurrying mother nature or for that fact, mother Pronghorn (pregnant this time of year of course). Besides the fat belly, you can tell Pronghorn sex by looking for a black cheek patch which this gal doesn’t have. The males have a big black splotch under their ears / behind their eyes.

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

Title: Rainbow over Parks Road

Posted on May 7, 2020April 29, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Heron Pair Building Nest

With a pink “Belt of Venus” twilight sky behind, the Male Great Blue Heron brings the sticks to it’s mate. The female builds the next and this is a brand new nest for 2020. There are at least 6 other nests in this treeline for these 5x5x5 birds. (5 foot tall, 5 foot wingspan, and 5 pounds). They are basically dinosaurs without teeth and tail in this paleontologists opinion. Tough light to freeze a flying flapping bird…

Spring time, the trees are just leafing out thusly I can still see these birds in their “bush”. Getting to see nesting activities this late in the game is difficult and changes with the lighting direction. While I’m waiting around for “flybys” and “launches” plus lighting… I’m busy searching this tree line for the Raptor and Owl Nests as well. Earlier last season I got a few long range captures of a Great Horned owl and a “chick” just down the tree line. This is a very biologically productive spot.

I am able to see clearly all 7 nests in this “rookery” at this early date. The female builds the nest with the male providing the “sticks” and other materials used in the construction. They start way early in the spring taking a month to hatch their eggs. It’s just about when the leaves start budding out on the Cottonwoods when I start seeing fledgelings. The leaves will obfuscate most of the nests from my long lenses (150 yards across a lake and 50 feet up this Cottonwood)

These large wading birds eat about anything they can catch/spear or otherwise grab. They hunt along the shorelines of the many lakes long the old “Texas Trail”. That trail runs from Miles City pretty much right by this spot as it continues down to Newcastle Wyoming. Most of the old cattle routes eventually head towards Oklahoma and northern Texas. I suspect millions of Montana Cattle Raised Cattle passed by this spot historically. They drank from this spring fed pond and enjoyed the large grassy pastures surrounding. It’s a nice spot to camp out for a few nights you might say 🤠 I suspect the herons were around here then as well….👀. Northern Wyoming/Southern Montana is certainly known as/located in their breeding areas.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Heron Pair Building Nest

Posted on April 30, 2020April 23, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Pronghorn Moving in Twilight

This is 10 minutes before sunrise this early spring morning when i ran across this fellow. He was actually heading my way as I was setting up to shoot the sunrise soon to occur over my shoulder. I’m in my vehicle and pretty much in a “blind” as far as the local critters are concerned. They usually don’t mind if the vehicle moves either as long as it isn’t a fast movement or more than 20 or 30 yards moving slowly. Approach is very important lolol. Pronghorn are way more tolerant before Civil Twilight that after.

This country is big. I drove about 2 miles out into the backcountry to have this guy cooperate while I composed the capture. It’s always good when animals sit for me… The Orange Alpenglow was just a foretelling of the sunrise minutes away. This capture was dead center of civil twilight that morning. The Orange is the surviving Light that has traveled hundreds of miles through atmosphere. Th ere is was reflected from atmospheric ice acting like a projector screen.

There is no snow here at the moment as this posts. . ….for late April. We have had BIG snows in early May…… It has been a very long winter as it started October 1 this year. It’s been not terribly severe but it’s been cold enough long enough for me lol. Life up in the high Wyotana borderlands can be harsh at times lolol. Never a lack of things to take photos of though 📸

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Pronghorn Moving in Twilight

Posted on April 23, 2020April 16, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Curve at Rockypoint Wyoming

The Three Sisters were one of the landmarks well known to those on the pioneer migrations. They could be “seen for a hundred miles” from afar. While navigating the open prairie over two track trails rutted from the wagon in front of you. Out of the morning mist, something you have just read about appears in front of you. Three Sisters were back lit up by alpenglow and the rising sun far off screen left. Also Known as the Missouri Buttes. They were an important landmark to the old wagon trains and settlers out in this country. It took a while to get from Saint Louis to this spot.

This taken a few weeks from now back in 2019 and just finished. Just at sunrise far to my left.

The Curved trail of red crushed “clinker” rock leads to an abandoned homestead in the middle of a BIG grassy area stretching 30 miles to the Sisters. The old homestead at at this location burned down many years ago. Like so many other places it was absorbed into a larger ranch. Our ranch has at least 4 old homesteads within a few miles of us. All abandoned from when this remote country didn’t have electricity or phone. Those conveniences didn’t come in to the many areas around here until the ranchers put up the poles and ran the wires back in the 50’s and 60’s.

You all have a great day and be safe in your abode…

Location: The Pass to Rockypoint on Trail Creek Road. Campbell County Wyoming.

Title: Curve at Rockypoint Wyoming

Posted on April 16, 2020April 10, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Sunrise Ridge Under Twilight

My job is to be aware of the sunset the a sunrise each day. I check the light all the time deciding whether to take out from my homestead with a ” box o cameras”.

Sometimes clouds trap all the light, the actors of the stage show have no spot to perform in. Sometimes I get to watch dramatic plays happening overhead taking over an hour from start to finish. I have a tough job watching entire sunsets and sunrises as they mutate from second to second. I might take 800 photos of a particular sunrise as this. 3 or 4 images of those images from the twilight will be finished. More images later from after sunrise of this morning with different frames. They were equally as dramatic.

Skies as above are rare but the high ridges I work have their share. My studied perspective/understanding of this place is totally incapable of comprehensively navigating the complexities of the workings of this, my local “universe”. (for lack of a better word). There is no way to gather the information needed in our own limited memory of our short travels/experiences here on earth. . Ironic, the complexity of our thoughts the local “universe” can not conceive, but the perspective it has is beyond our comprehension.

All of us has ultimately a figurative and literal connection to the land lol. We will all end up there with all that came before. Some in our society are multiple generations removed from it. Meat comes from the grocery store for them. Not me. I grew up on a farm on the Prairie. Lived on a remote ranch in Northeastern Wyoming/Southeastern Montana for the last 2 decades.

I’m a geologist after all…. I would like to think my connection to nature here it is deeper than most. There is much more connectivity between living things and the environment than we give credit for occurs I feel. Even disconnected to nature by nurture human/me, can feel things happening an orderly manner here in the highlands. It’s probably my own psyche settling into the cycles, the yearly natural events of this place in space and time.

A tripod can come in handy in this lower light civil twilight sky. Long exposures are hard to do without them….

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Sunrise Ridge Under Twilight

Posted on March 26, 2020March 19, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Frosty Hoar Frost Feathers

This image is looking straight down. Just on the edge of a cut Coal Mine Equipment Tire. This tire is 10 feet across and holds maybe 800 – 1000 gallons of water for my stock. It’s indestructible of course. That tread cleat on the top is 10 inches across. These are 2 to 3 inch feathers which make them pretty big around these parts. With the right weather conditions, many unusual things happen up here.

New these tires cost maybe 12 grand or more new. I bought one repurposed for a stock tank recently installed for 700 bucks. One side wall is removed. Cut off with some effort and a water jet I believe. Delivered by semi-truck, he thick rubber tire is laid down on prepared ground. Hopefully near a pipeline spigot. Powdered concrete under the center drain PVC pipe already in place. This seals the tank upon filling the first time. These tanks will last maybe a century so they are a one time installation for me. They would be virtually impossible to hurt. Your truck would bounce off of them if you ran into it. Might break the seal lolol. Occasionally one will spring a leak, just drop some powdered concrete over the hole and fill it up with water will usually patch it.

Repurposing is a ranching tradition. When an object is useful, it will be stored on ranch for decades. I have used many iron pieces from 100 years ago in various welding projects lol..

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Frosty Hoar Frost Feathers

Posted on March 26, 2020December 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Grassy Bedded Buck Pronghorn

Ever had to crawl up to get a shot? I’m too old for that stuff anymore lolol. It’s pretty hard to get a big buck laying down on the job of protecting his girls. Stealth is a slow pace but a long lens sure helps a bit unless your carrying it….

Pronghorn are the Fasted Land Animal in North America. Nothing else even comes close. They developed these skills/anatomy as a result of learning to avoid predation. It seems there used to be some pretty fast Lions, tigers and other cats living in these hills. Those predators were obviously prolific during the last Ice Ace and before here in the Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

The most most recent continental Ice sheet (5 glaciations in the last 500,000 years) stopped it’s advance about 20 miles up into Montana from my perspective here on the Bliss DInosaur Ranch. There were LOTS of critters hanging out below the glaciers. The Pleistocene Epoch is typically defined as the time period that began about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago. Paleontologist recognize this age as a time of geologically rapid Glaciations followed by warmer periods in between. A vast and diverse “Mega-fauna” was present within those variable ecosystems.

About 11,700 years ago, things started warming up for the 5th time in a half a million years. (Warm periods between the ice sheet advances). The earth’s various climates (the earth has NO climate, it has ALL climates) were “Changing” every 100,000 years or so. The Term “Cycle” is thrown about loosely these days. I use it here in that I’m glad it’s warm because living here with an ice sheet 20 miles to our north….Might have experienced some “Climate Change” back then. Sort of like this winter so far….

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

Title: Grassy Bedded Buck Pronghorn

Posted on March 19, 2020March 12, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Snowflakes Over Human Hair

Fibers in general will catch flakes and often hold them ideally vertically for me. I get into enough Photo-yoga without having to block light to get over horizontal flakes. I can’t think of a better media for this work as it won’t melt the snowflakes. The fibers area wonderful insulator.

Photographic musings:

Just before I started typing this narrative, I was outside with this coat looking for that perfect flake while enjoying a near zero windchill. The gear I use is variable depending on the lighting as I work from several Macro lenses. Each lens you should EVER buy should be a generational purchase. Don’t skimp on your optics… Macro Lens is the search term…

I have lenses I’m still using I bought in the 1990’s and use several e-bay acquired 1970’s lenses say weekly… They made gooooood glass in the 70’s and camera adaptors can put a nikon lens on a canon camera for example easily. On the other hand, I consider camera backs a disposable item after the repair cost exceeds a new camera. I wear a camera back out about every 1/2 year. They are worth less and less each new model that comes out. I haven’t worn one out to the point of not being able to repair one though just yet. What’s good about Sony is that you CAN get them fixed.

Environmental stress destroys complex delicate electronics, LOTS of manual settings, I beat up the settings wheels. They wear out. There is a lot of grit in the atmosphere/environment here too. I find that cameras in this extreme environment stop working in some manner in the 50-100k click mark. I easily take that many photos and more but spread that 8 cameras currently. I send one in about every 2 months or so lolol. I’m surrently back to 7 functioning workhorses for the next month or so.

Being short on cameras is sort of a handy-cap the way I do things these days sadly. Rapaired, they come back like new if History is a guide. If your able to afford it, having cameras and lenses covering all different focal lengths is HIGHLY desirable. I ALWAYS take 5 or 6 cameras and lens combinations with me while working to make what I do. You can sure take good photos with one camera body with multiple lenses though.

Problem is you have to change lenses during a shoot. No one has enough time during a sunset to be changing lenses. For an example: last night I worked 5 cameras for a half an hour last night as the Sun set directly over the Bighorn Mountains. Every camera has dozens or hundreds of images of that event. Changing lenses also introduces dirt and dust into your camera. You can buy cleaning kits on amazon. Not that hard to do. Get the right sized swab kit though…

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Snowflakes Over Human Hair

Posted on March 12, 2020March 4, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Columbine Purple White BiColor

Everyone needs some purple in their life at least once a week. Spring is but a few months away. Hang in there cabin fever sufferers.. Take your vitamin D , have more “whoopee” time as all exercise counts. Vitamin B12…. Get some natural sunlight colored bulbs around where you hang out. It will help as will taking up an indoor hobby like finishing images from the summer time I’ve put off till now. 👀

Columbine comes in many cultivars with various shades and hues from blues to reds with all the spectrum in between. A bicolor nature trends in the species. They are very distinctive if your not familiar with their bell shaped flowers. They have a huge elongated nectar spur . If you are unfamiliar with the flower, you should google it. You’ll see them hanging out in light shade. Stick your nose into one if you can as they are very fragrant. These are wonderful flowers build/engineered to attract humming birds and hawk moths. The same flower design prevents bees from penetrating to the nectar bearing parts. Long tongued nectar feeder get a break from these guys. Hummingbirds indeed are the most effective pollinator of the Columbine Flower. We have dozens of Columbine in patches of naturalized cultivars mixed with groups that were here when I arrived 20 years ago.

The Homestead here at the ranch has seen many different gardeners over the 100 years of habitation on this site. I’m pretty sure I’ve done more than all the previous gardeners combined lol. This is not to under cut their contributions. Built into this homestead were wonderful patches of flowers of all kinds. They were present when we moved here. We divided many overgrown clumps and get the fruit of that every spring now. Columbine are all about. Someone liked them a lot decades ago. There is so much history lost to the flow of the currents in time and space.

Object oriented, Landscape 3×2 aspect to 3 feet.

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

Title: Columbine Purple White BiColor

Posted on March 12, 2020March 6, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Turtle Butte Crimson Twilight

The stripe of orange Alpenglow under the Crimson Cloud Deck is what the sun light is passing through. A fully involved twilight sky is the result of that red/orange light making it through to the cloud deck This image was taken ON the border line of Montana / Wyoming.

The Butte actually sits directly on the border which coincidentally is precisely 1/2 way between the Equator and the North Pole. Some bright guy in the past decided that a kilometer would be based on the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. That distance is10,000 kilometers between the geographic characteristics on the globe. There is actually a difference in distance to the south versus the north pole from the equator. That is something you’ll need to google for yourself 👀🤔😀

I must climb several hundred feet of topography to get this eastern view. It’s a several mile drive over two track roads. This spring time image from from May of 2019. I’m about tired of spotty snow and mud patches in the backcountry and am waiting patiently for mid may to open this magical world back to me. I do miss unlimited access to the ranch’s high ground. The views are spectacular up there. I consider the east west view from certain high points around here to be 180 miles from horizon to horizon. The Big Sky of Montana merges seamlessly with the Wonderful Wyoming Skies right over my place.

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

Title: Turtle Butte Crimson Twilight

Posted on March 5, 2020March 6, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Moon Set Belt of Venus

This is a deep photo lol. The Depth of Field (DOF) is very thick. Getting all this in focus is a technical thing that can be done in Manual mode as long as your camera is capable of the dynamic range required to get all this detail. These Sony Alpha 7R series have silly good ability in low light as you might have noticed following my work.

I always rant and rave against deeply blue snow which is (in my opinion) a very very very rare natural color only in EARLY civil Twilight.. Pink however does reflect off ice like a movie projector screen even after sunrise.. Pink is common relatively IF you have a set of mountains named (for real) the “Red Hills”. I wonder why they are called the “Red Hills”. 🤔

I see pink Belt of Venus” (BOV) Alpenglow light hitting the ground “Fairly” regularly in the winter. Normally at sunrise you just see the BOV as a pink band in the western sky just before sunrise. The shadow of the earth’s horizon being a shrinking with the rising sun, blue wedge under the pink band. With the sun arisen behind the camera above the horizon, that red light surviving traveling hundreds of miles through low angle atmosphere. It is the camera that is in shadow of the horizon. That shadow was moving at close to 1000 miles per hour toward me. (25,000 miles around the earth, 24 hours in a rotation = 1000 mph. Chasing the sunrise is a fools game unless your in a supersonic jet.

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

Title: Moon Set Belt of Venus

Posted on February 27, 2020March 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Under the Mesocyclone

Under the Mesocyclone 2:1 diptych 2-20″x20″ images.

Im estimating this young developing Mesocyclone is 15 miles distant. The image is about 50 miles wide. Relatively small for a Rotating mesocyclone. It was growing at the time. Moving in towards me at that time. Being high on a ridge in a Jeep when one of these rolls over you can get exciting.

That’s a pretty big lightning bolt about 10 miles away from my location/ The left part of that bolt was miles long certainly. This is a little further out out from me than it appears as it is “zoomed in a bit with a telephoto. Telephotos crush perspective but cover a smaller part of the sky. You the trick is to point the camera at where the lighting flashed last time. Using a wide camera is easy but gives you smaller bolts. A telephoto properly pointed will get you up close and personal. I do use an automatic lightning trigger that will trip the shutter on the flash. I endorse no specific brand .

The sunset for that day is ongoing exactly behind the rain shaft on the right at this captures time. Thusly the bottom of the storm is pretty much backlit as well as your going to see through one. A Thunderstorm sun filter….🤔😜📸 I am such an opportunist of a photographer. I use what ever natural light filter that is present…👀

There are just plain intense downpours under these storms sometimes. Depending on how fast they are moving makes you lucky or flooded locally lol. These only rain on a few percent of the ground area up here. Spotty! The ground under them becomes totally soaked if the storm doesn’t move.

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

Title: Under the Mesocyclone

Posted on February 20, 2020March 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wyoming Volcanic Necks Diptych

Wyoming Volcanic Necks Diptych (2- 20″x20″ images)

That’s Devil’s Tower on the left and the “Three Sisters”

This country is big. The high ground looks pretty close but those mounds of phenolytic porphyry are pretty big thusly far away. . These bumps on the landscape used to be buried by thousands of feet of sediments surrounding them. The hard rock volcanic neck rose up thousands of feet higher than it is now.. The Little Missouri River removed some covering sediments from the west side. The Belle Fourche River Drainage providing the bulk of that work to the east. The soft rock is removed while the harder material makes mountains. That’s pretty much the way it works all over the planet.

This was a beautiful evening for a partly cloudy sky sunset. . These kind of evenings are all about the side shows, not the sunset itself. It was calm, little or no wind (rare), you could hear cattle calling from miles around. The air was crisp and icy as can be. It was only 5 minutes to sunset at this capture so the shadows are very long. The contrasts are all building as the “Golden Hour” draws to a conclusion.

That detail on the Devil’s tower is from 40 miles away. In maybe 100 trips to take this scene, this one might be the clearest view from the Pass at Rockypoint that I have in my portfolio.

Location: The Pass at Rocky Point Wyoming, On the border of Crook and Campbell Country about 4 miles south of Montana.

Title: Wyoming Volcanic Necks Diptych

Posted on January 30, 2020January 23, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

I occasionally go on long morning drives after a fresh snow to see what I can see. I will drive a big loop maybe 30-40 miles working what ever I come across that interests me. Mostly untapped by photographers the back roads of Wyoming are. . There are a few of us up here but not many doing this full time.

So I had drive a big round trip circuit and was just about back. Now this is a “major” local artery. It’s a Gravel Road but it’s usually a fairly busy road. Here it is on a Sunday morning at 9AM with no tracks but my own. I was surprised by it. The road I live on is often untracked most weekends unless I drive over it. You don’t want to break down out here. No cell phone service and no body coming by since the night before say 18 hours at least. There are some very remote parts of Wyotana I cruise about where I would expect that but not so much here.

Snow Diamonds (Diamond Dust)

All Blue Sky morning it was Diamond Dusting. Can it really snow on a cloudless, sunny day? It can if it’s diamond dust. It was pretty light so ore like Mother Nature’s tinsel than snow, this weather bonus is caused by millions of tiny ice crystals that form near the ground. As they float slowly in the air (much like household dust) they reflect the sunlight, which makes them sparkle like diamonds! A very similar phenomena is responsible for sun pillars both below and above the sun. Here those ice crystal plates fell all the way to the ground.

You see them on the road as bright sparkles.

Location :Trail Creek Road , 9 miles east from Rt’s 59, . Northeastern Wyoming, Campbell Country looking west up into Montana.

Title: Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

Posted on January 9, 2020January 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Sunrise Crimson Portrait

Using a 1600mm telephoto, I bring horizons 40 miles out, up close and personal. The sun here is stationary and actually behind the horizon. This is NOT entirely line of site. The Atmospheric lens is bending the light around the curve of the planet. You see it setting and rising earlier at it’s rise. It sets later at sunset due to this. The Suns Disk actually is below the horizon here totally. It’s an interesting effect of the bending of light around the curve of the planet.

The thick atmosphere hundreds of miles thick only allows the longest red rays through. Yellow is a component of the sky this late in the sunrise as well. A quick transition to real line of site viewing occurs. Usually somewhere around 10 minutes after sunrise. The actual position of the sun eventually catches up to it’s apparent position. Again caused by the lessening refraction of that atmospheric lens that thins as the sun apparently rises higher.

Crimson close ups within big sky shows are not rare, they are beautiful however. Some are also better than others. This one is a good one…. You have to remember that this is a very small area of the sky. Hold your thumb out at an arms length and you would cover the entire area of this frame with it. Telephoto lenses crush perspective. The higher the magnification, the mountains in the foreground seem larger, but the sun which is already proportionally the same size, seems huge by comparison. It’s an optical illusion/perspective crush. 🤔🤔📸

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

Title: Sunrise Crimson Portrait