Panoramas

Early morning picture of the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. Click for larger image.

Got up at 5 a.m. this morning and the park, beautiful as ever, is filled with wildflowers. People downstream aren’t going to appreciate the wet spring weather because the rivers are full and will start spilling over, but around here it means lots of blue, yellow and white flowers sprinkled throughout thick green grass.

This is a shot taken a few miles from the West Yellowstone entrance. It’s two pictures stitched together, and that’s the actual moon in the upper left.

The west gate into Yellowstone National Park closes tomorrow morning. Was able to get in last night and capture this second-to-last sunset of the 2010 season. In the background is the Gallatin Mountain Range in Montana, in the foreground is the Madison River.

Second to last sunset of the 2010 summer season in Yellowstone National Park. Click image for larger version.

What’s the best gate into Yellowstone National Park? I like the north one at Gardiner, and the quote on it from Teddy Roosevelt is inspiring, but my favorite is an unofficial natural one.

Drive into the park from West Yellowstone and continue on the road for about eight miles. It’s mostly flat, but then you’ll come around a corner and see these two mountains ahead of you. The roads winds around the bend and as you enter these mountains, with your pulse quickening, you gain entry to explore and view geysers, hot pools, bison, wolves and elk, in an area unlike any other in the world.

This is how it looked yesterday evening – you can use your mouse to zoom in and out on this panorama or scroll back and forth, and the bottom right button launches it in full-screen mode.

I have a couple of developments on the buffalo hide front that may be of interest:

1. I enjoy reading historical accounts of the buffalo and found an oral history taken by the American Museum of Natural History back in 1913. They spoke with a female member of the Hidatsa tribe and she talked about how they used buffalo hides. You can read more about this on my e-commerce site. I also include pictures comparing a summer buffalo hide to one in winter.

2. I have a great new buffalo hide available and, for something new, I’ve created a panorama of it. You can zoom in and out as well as scroll back and forth. My whole goal is to help you envision how the buffalo rug will look in your cabin or mountain lodge. You can go to the panorama page by clicking here.

Great snowshoeing trip yesterday on the Refuge Point Snowshoe Trail. We didn’t quite get half way into the trail when the blue skies you see in the panorama disappeared and dark, stormy clouds started moving in.

There was at least a foot of snow already on the ground and in some places more. Even in the sunny weather we were having trouble spotting the blue trail markers, so decided to turn around and backtracked to the trail head.

I took the panorama about 20 minutes before the snow clouds moved in. Weather changes quickly in the mountains and you always want to be prepared.

More information about this trail is here.

This is a 360 degree panorama I shot with my Canon Digital Rebel T1i (you should buy the T2i now). This is a spot about 41 miles north of West Yellowstone and you can see in the panorama how it got its name. There’s a campground here, and people do rock climbing here also. That’s the Gallatin River in the foreground.

Click the bottom right button to launch into full-screen mode and use your mouse to spin around the entire scene.

Here’s a shot of last night’s sunset over the Madison River. I was driving home from shooting pictures around the Big Sky area when I noticed it was going to be a wonderful sunset. The problem? I was at least 10 minutes away from a spot to stop. That was an agonizing 10 minutes!

Hit the “full screen” button on the bottom right for an big view, or just drag your mouse around the picture, and use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.