Spring

Bee on flowers...just had to snag a shot. f/11, 1/125 sec exposure, ISO-200 at 178mm focal length. Taken off hand.

Blue

Love the stark blue this shot provided. Taken downtown Great Falls, MT. Canon 50D with Sigma 18-250mm lens. f/11, 1/125 sec exposure and ISO-100 at 35mm focal length.

The Storm

Heading through Heart Butte, MT and drove into this storm front. The setting sun behind and the storm directly in front created this unique contrast band of bright and dark....toss in a double rainbow and you get a great photo op.

Tide

Lake McDonald from the East shore. During the winter and early spring the lake levels are very low in Glacier(until the snow melts off the mountains). This makes for great shot opportunities along the extended shores. I took this shot using Canon 50D with Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens. With the sun nearly directly behind me the water appears to be lit up almost by flash(unexpected surprise). Kneeling at the water edge a feeling of being in the lake is created and the submerged rocks add a splash of color in the foreground. f/20, 1/80 sec exposure, ISO-100 at 10mm focal length from Slik Lighty Pod III monopod.

Natural Beauty

This shot was taken along a stream along Hwy 2 near South West Glacier National Park. The various rock colorations made for a n eye catching subject. I used Canon 50D camera with Sigma 18-250mm DC OS HSM lens. f/16, 1/25sec exposure, ISO-100 at 28mm with sunlight white balance setting. Shot off hand. Contrast adjusted in post editing.

Tower Rock

Tower Rock State Park is a small few acre park with a unique history. It was here that Lewis and Clark climbed up onto the large rock buttresses to gain a vantage point for navigating the canyons of the Big Belt mountains. It is a great place to climb around with a few steep sloped with a mixture of scree and boulder scrambles. The views are pretty nice from the top although the highway tends to detract from it a bit. What it does offer to the photographer's lens is an array of rock formations from small boulders to 400 foot high towering walls, weather beaten dead fall timber and lichen and moss covered rocks and you do get great glimpses of the Big Belts which hold snow into early summer.

For this trek i went light taking only the camera and my all purpose 18-250mm sigma lens. This combo was more that sufficient to capture the types of shots I was after.

Clouds

A great evening of boiling cloud formations rolled into town and I just had to capture them. I drove a few miles north of Great Falls, MT to Benton Lake wildlife refuge which provided a great open unbroken horizon to work with. I was shooting almost directly into the sun and while that is not the ideal situation it did provide great glow to the clouds which provided the neccessary contrast I was after. I set my camera to Monochrome(black and white) and opted to add red filter effect to enhance the sky/cloud contrast. The result was pretty much what I was after....