I recently added a new page to my website showcasing the most popular photos in terms of sales for 2010.  I thought I'd post the top three here.  I'd also like to thank everyone who has purchased prints this year, either in Yellowstone or via my website. 

 "Three Amigos" has been my top selling photo since 2007 when it was displayed in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History as part of the Windland Smith Rice display.  It won first place in the Wildlife Category of the Nature's Best International Photography Competition and was also featured on the cover of Nature's Best Magazine.  Since then, it's been featured in several other magazines and calendars.

 While "Welcome to Yellowstone" hasn't garnered the accolades that "Three Amigos" has, but, since the image was taken in April 2009, it has been my second best selling image.  The image depicts a young grizzly as it was rolling in the snow.  The bear had drawn a large crowd that watched it graze for over an hour in a snow free area near the closed Norris campground.  The bear moved off into the woods and the crowd left.  I waited around and was rewarded when the bear came back and rolled in the snow.

 "The Glare" also hasn't garnered much in accolades but it is my best selling bird photo.  Also titled "American Kestrel", few people actually know what kind of bird this is.  Kestrels are small birds of prey, no bigger than a robin.  They are beautifully colored and often hunt rodents.  This one was hunkered down, in April 2008, on a snag along the road in Lamar Valley.  I sat and watched for some time.  Typically, they are shy and don't hang around long for photos.  Most kestrels only migrate through Yellowstone in the Spring but some do nest and spend all summer.

The rest of the top 15 can be found by clicking here.

Recently, we did a short hike up to Trout Lake just for something to do.  Edyta and I both brought our cameras, of course, and again, we both came away with some very different images.  Despite being late in the summer season, there were still a lot of cool summer flowers blooming, so after shooting some wide angle stuff featuring the flowers, lake, and surrounding mountains, I broke out my macro lens for some close up work.  The above image is an example.  I wanted to keep the depth of field shallow for this detail shot, so I shot at F4 on my 100mm macro.  Because the plant was very light colored, I also opened up about half a stop, trying to keep the image bright.

Since I had taken out my macro and Edyta was still shooting close ups with her wide angle lens, I was curious to see the images she was coming up with.  So when I saw her close ups of these puff balls shot with the wide angle lens, I was impressed with her creativity.  The placement here between the clouds was really cool and the low angle to isolate the plant against the sky was impressive.  This image was taken handheld with a Canon 40D and 18-55mm lens.  I'm not sure what f stop was used.  She also shot similiar photos using the lake as the background instead of the sky, which also worked well too.  Once again, taking a fresh perspective on common subjects can create unique images.

I've recently added two temporary on-line galleries to my website at www.travelsinbearcountry.com .  First, since early summer was one of the best I've had for bear viewing and photography, I added a separate gallery with grizzly photos called Summer of the Grizzly.  The photo above, titled "Cute Times Two" was taken in May near Obsidian Cliffs.  These were the first two cubs of the year I saw.  The image was taken from a tripod with 500mm lens and a 1.4 teleconvertor on a Canon 50D.  The image below, titled "The Charge", was taken a little before in May.  The grizzly is charging, but not anything living.  An unthoughtful photographer left a piece of cloth unattended.  The strong wind caught it and it blew down the slope past the grizzly and into Obsidian Creek.  When the bear saw it, the bear charged towards it.  This image was shot with the same equipment as listed above.

The second gallery I added is "Summer in Yellowstone 2010" and lists photos I've taken from May until mid-August.  Below are two of these images.  The first was taken early in the season from Artist Point.  I used a telephoto zoom and isolated an area of thermal activity near the bottom of the canyon near the river.  My Canon 5D was mounted to a tripod and I zoomed in to find the composition I preferred.

The final image is one of the earliest I took this summer, at the beginning of May.  The sun had not yet risen over a hill to the east, so this terraces runoff channel from Grand Prismatic was still in shadow, creating the blue color cast.  Again, my 5D was mounted to a tripod and I used a wide angle zoom lens to frame this composition the way I wanted.  Once again, both of these new galleries can be found at www.travelsinbearcountry.com  for a limited time.

Driving around in our national parks, it's not uncommon to see several photographers hard at work photographing the same view.  I often wonder how different their images are from each other, especially when there are so many similiar photos of places like Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, or of Lower Falls in Yellowstone.  Well,t he other evening, conditions were making for a beautiful sunset over Yellowstone Lake, so Edyta and I headed off to photograph these lupine.  The photo above was my photo of the week for August 8.  This composition is pretty straight forward but one I had envisioned for this location.

This next image I took a much lower angle, almost laying on the ground and I moved much closer to the lupine so they dominated the scene.  Both images were taken with a Canon 17-40mm lens on a full frame camera.  Settings for both were around f16 to f22 to maximize depth of field.  But, this image, like my previous one, still utilized the entire bloom of lupines.

Edyta, on the on hand, saw this scene completely different.  She tends to be drawn to details, close ups, and macro shots.  Her take on the same group of flowers at the same time of day is one of a close up of the blossoms with the colorful sunset as the background.  The breeze caused a slight blurring in the flowers, giving the shot a dream like effect.  She shot this image with a Canon 40D and an 18-55 lens.

Likewise, as the light faded, I focused on long exposures of the wave action on the lake.  I used about a 4 second exposure to create a dream like effect on the water here, once again using the 17-40mm lens.  Below, Edyta's view of the waves on the lake is completely different from mine.  She used a longer lens, I believe a 100-400mm for this shot, focusing in closely on the wave action, using a shallow depth of field.  This draws the attention to the wave while the foreground and background are blurred.  I really liked the effect she came up with on this, though wouldn't have thought to shoot it myself.

I guess the morale of the story is that, as photographers, we all have our own unique vision of a place.  How we see and photograph it can be completely different.  To see and experience those differences can be pretty interesting.  We can also learn from each other in order to expand our own vision and creative abilities.  Edyta only started using a DSLR a month or so ago, yet she's already taught me to look beyond my normal vision.

I just read an article on the USA Today website in relation to the fatal grizzly attack near Cooke City.  The article, "Did photographer bait grizzly in Yellowstone attack?" doesn't have anything official from any agencies investigating the maulings, only some speculation.  The one line from a Montana Fish and Wildlife employee stating "his agency is investigating"  is rather vague and doesn't clarify if they are investigating the allegation of baiting posted on Facebook or if they're actually investigating a baiting situation.  If this does turn out to be true, it's extremely unfortunate that a photographer would be so thoughtless and do something to create such a dangerous situation.  If anything comes of this, I'll post an update.

August 17- Update-  It seems the allegations of a photographer baiting bears in the Cooke City area were unsubstaniated, which is good.  The bear was determined to be malnutritioned but I think the big thing to remember always is that bears are top of the chain predators and when in bear country, necessary precautions should always be taken.  The most recent article is found here at Grizzly in Fatal Mauling was Stressed...