Bears and berries

Last week was a good one for wildlife photography in the Jackson Hole area…. The cold weather has finally urged the elk to start moving south towards the National Elk Refuge – but the “elk reduction hunt” in Grand Teton National Park’s east side puts hunters in their path… Three families of black bears have been working the bushes covered in berries alongside Moose = Wilson Road, providing entertainment as well as photography for those willing to brave the crowds of people.  Moose are active along the Snake River and the Gros Ventre Range. Early morning is still the best time to be out and looking for subjects to photograph!

Adult black bear reaches up for berries from a branch.

Bull elk silhouetted on ridge in early morning light.

Botswana – April / May 2010

I’m very excited about this new photography workshop in spring of 2010…. Covering the Suvati and Chitabe camps in Botswana,  the rainy season is over and a great variety of wildlife will gather near the waterholes, making for great photographic opportunities! Unforgettable Journeys will conduct this expedition.  Check out the details at:  http://www.journeysunforgettable.com/safaricentral/?cat=29

Small group size, professional image critique, and 1 on 1 instruction will provide a great educational environment!

Back online!

The past month I was onboard the National Geographic Explorer in Norway and the British Isles. It was a great trip, providing a chance to visit the archipelago of Svalbard. Located at nearly 80 degrees north latitude, it is parallel to the northernmost portion of Greenland and only 600 miles from the North Pole!  Svalbard includes the island of Spitzbergen and is home to polar bears, walrus, bearded seals, auks, Arctic terns, skuas, and much more.

Upon leaving Svalbard, we traveled across the Bering Sea to Terumso, Norway and followed the fjords of Norway southward to Bergen.  Picking up a whole new set of guests, we then sailed to the Shetland Islands and the town of Lerwick. We continued down the west side of Ireland and finished the expedition on Wednesday, Sept 3 in Portsmouth, England.  Along the way we saw the 5000 year old “standing stones” of Callanish, the Irish towns of Kellybegs and Dinkle and down to Dartmouth, England.

I’ll be posting a link to a photo gallery to highlight some of the locations from the trip!

Upon returning home, I completed work on a new book – “Antarctica – Land of Ice”. This 112 page pictoral of the Antarctica Peninsula includes images of tabular icebergs, penguins, whales, seals and more. The book is available now and will begin shipping in two weeks.

Antarctica – L…

By C. Robert Smith

Book Preview

Promised Flicker nest w/remote

I promised an update on using a remote shutter release on a camera – in this case photographing a northern flicker nest in Grand Teton National Park… I just received a ProMaster remote shutter release and am trying it out. Setting up a camera at a bird nest and then staying back so as not to impact the subject(s) seems like a good idea.  We all want to be good stewards of our natural resources and allowing wildlife to be wild is one of the goals of an ethical nature photographer. So, I went to the site early in the morning, setup the camera, then walked away and waited.  Pre-focusing the camera is a good idea.  The focus then

A female northern flicker feeds her chicks at the nest.

stays where you put it.  Making sure you have enough depth of field  and high enough shutter speed are both important also.

I used a Nikon D3 and D300 with a 600/f4 on a Satchler tripod with Wimberley gimbal mount and set the lens to manual focus. Having watched the parents come to the nest a couple times helped in knowing how they approached the nest and how they positioned themselves once at the hole in the tree allowed me to set the distance from the tree and how wide a field of view I needed to include the whole body of the parent plus the chicks as they reached out from the nest hole…

One more kestral day

Newly fledged kestral chick

I went back to the kestral nest to see if I could catch them coming from the nest hole.  It seems they had other ideas… none were in the nest, but one was hanging on the side of the tree and another came to the top of the tree after a while.  All five were visible at one point in various trees around the site.

I did have an added bonus – a flicker nest is in the next aspen tree to the southwest.. So, that is my target on Wednesday morning!

Hello world!

Male kestral chick on aspen tree limb

I welcome you to my new blog where I will post new activity, whether it be in my backyard – which is the Greater Yellowstone EcoSystem, or one of the many photographic trips I take!  Our next trip that’s coming up is two trips on Lindblad’s National Geographic Explorer, which will take me from Arctic Svalbard down thru the fjords of Norway and then to the British Isles, including northern Scotland, the northern and western coast of Ireland, then ending at Portsmouth, England on Sept 4.

But this morning’s trip out was to an American kestral nest in Grand Teton National Park!  4 chicks fledged from the nest, taking their first flights.  While the landings were a little rough for some, each survived their first winged journey and were preening their feathers from perches in trees near the nest tree. (Photos are coming, I just need a little time!)