American Bison

I just missed this past week’s Weekly Challenge (“Parallel Lines”), else I might’ve shared this one there.

This past winter I once again enjoyed several interesting photo ops involving bison during my Yellowstone tours. I find that the combination of stark winter scenery and the iconic shape of this species really produces some interesting images, many of which are conducive to black and white (it’s gotten so “bad” I decided to create a monochrome bison calendar this year :laughing:).

This is a very famous stand of “Bobbysocks” trees in the park interior. The trees have died out due to the thermal runoff saturating the ground (the name is derived from the white stain on their trunks where minerals have leeched upward from their base), but they still stand and attract of lot of photographers interested in trying different landscape shots. On this day we were working our way back north, only to encounter a traffic jam, as a row of snow coaches and snowmobiles were trying to figure out how to deal with this bull bison, stationed very close to the road. We had to park in line and wait… and why not? The bison eventually decided to trudge through the snow a short way from the road. We just hoped he’d stay parallel to us and hit the right gap in the trees. We sat for a while on the coach, watching out the doors and windows, until the moment came.

Canon R5
Canon 17-40mm
ISO 200
1/640th
f/8

Max

@maxwaughphoto

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Max, although the stand of trees might be a bit iconic for landscape photogs this truly is all about this single isolated bison literally waist or neck deep plowing thru the snow. Seeing this extreme effort really brings to mind how strong these creatures are to survive these harsh winters.
I’m sure this will be another fine image for your B&W bison calendar. An excellent image all around… :+1:

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It’s beautifully captured !
You placed the Bison strategically and those diagonal shadows really add to the frame !

Cheers!

Max, clearly not shot in the last couple of weeks… :wink: The starkness is palpable with the trees doing a great job of showing off the Bison. The nearly horizontal tree shadows complement the verticality of the trees very well.

I really like this photograph. The verticality of the trees contrasts really nicely with their shadows and gives the image a really nice geometric feel. The Bison in the midst of all that is a perfect foil to the surrounding landscape. Just a great shot.

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