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Wild in the Badlands

What better way to live my life than photographing wildlife -waiting and watching for the drama to play out right before my eyes in real time. Each sighting is a surprise, a true blessing. Its presence cannot be demanded, its beauty cannot be required, and its drama cannot be scheduled. The magic is a gift of nature, freely given with no expectation or requirement from me except to be still, to abide in the moment, to be grateful, and to leave a better person.

I love the layers of colors and textures found in the buttes!

Even as I am preparing today to leave the Badlands of North Dakota, I am thinking about a return trip. This place has captured my heart! I've decided there are no words that I can compose that will sufficiently describe the beauty, mystery, and excitement Ive experienced here. You just have to experience it for yourself! So this blog will be less about words and more about photos. I hope my images reflect the diversity of the wildlife I witnessed and the beauty that enthralled me, although mere images can't possibly do justice to the essence of the Badlands.

I spotted 32 horses in this area. This image was taken about 3/4 mile away

The horses in the Badlands are very different in conformation and color than the ones I have photographed in other parts of the United States. These horses seem to have large heads, often roman noses, and are very muscular and large. I saw grays, black, overo, roans, white, bay, and sorrell, actually just about every color and markings you will find on a horse though I didnt see any palamino.

Portraits of wild horses

I have been told this stallion lost his herd to another stallion just 3 weeks ago. He is marked up with a gash in his flank area and an assortment of other injuries. I found his back off the road a ways, grazing in solitude with a beautiful blue roan nearby. When this white stallion disappeared on a high rocky ridge, hidden by the landscape, the blue roan became upset, nickering for him and almost frantically looking for him. I followed the blue roan from a distance to see where he would find the old stallion. It was a breathtaking sight to see this white stallion on the washed out gray rocks and rocky overlook with the expansive landscape rolled out beneath him. I processed this image in black and white to emphasize the dull, muted tones that painted a picture of solitude and defeat. Im not gonna lie. This sight moved me emotionally. I may have been tempted to camp out there with him if I had had a sleeping bag in the car.

It's been on my mind lately to try to learn how to take images that are different from anyone else's. I'd like to be able to expand my creative outlook and snap some images that are still realistic- that capture the wildlife in his environment- but with an artsy flavor. So these next few images are my attempts.

I enjoyed photographing this beautiful, curious, attentive gray stallion

My final day produced a sighting of a nice herd with 2 babies and an older baby, perhaps not quite a yearling. We were able to get as close as needed with telephoto lenses. They were obviously comfortable with our presence, often rolling on the ground or walking casually by us. The babies were especially fun to watch, often bursting into an energetic run with kicks and leaps.

As they were moving quickly toward a complex of buttes, farther out of our shooting range, this one colt in particular was obviously feeling his oats. Being so far out of our focal reach, about a quarter of a mile, my images aren’t great, more of proof shots, but boy was it fun to be a witness to all this! The buttes were the backdrop to an amazing display of sunlight and they were literally running off into the rising daylight. I wish my shots more adequately reflected the beauty of that moment but I have it all, tack sharp, tucked away in the graphics library of my mind.

Part of the excitement in hunting for wildlife to photograph is the hunt itself. While it’s true certain wildlife may frequent a path, a watering hole, or a canopy of trees to nap beneath, they are also wild and as such, unpredictable. But knowing their habits and their routine at least provides a beginning point of where to look. Spotting the wildlife is always the most enjoyable aspect of the hunt although the hunt itself- hiking through the tall prairie grasses, across a rocky path, or through thick, knotted vegetation while scanning the scenery- is part of the fun too! I don’t even care that Im sweaty, thirsty, hungry, being eaten by bugs or needing to go to the bathroom, Im in the zone and that’s a place I love to be!

For a larger view of any image click on it

On the evening of our final day, I was driving the loop, when I spotted the familiar herd of 7 that we had photographed many times. But tonight they were at the base of a very large butte, one of a complex of buttes strung together, spanning a half mile along the roadside. I pulled over and grabbed my camera and decided on the 300mm f4 with a 1.4 extender attached because the horses were pretty far out and because I can handhold that lens. The horses were closer than I had predicted and their large fast moving bodies filled up nearly the entire frame. Not wanting to miss anything I followed them from a safe distance as they moved farther away from where I had parked the car. Had I known they were going to give me quite a show for an hour and a half I would have run back to the car to get a second camera body with a 100-400mm lens attached. But I didn’t. You can never really know these things I suppose and I deciced it was too much of a gamble to risk missing the show. At any rate, in an attempt to accommodate the longer lens, I crossed the road and climbed the hillside to the top and planted myself on a ridge for a wonderful night of theatre! Any time they moved on down to the next butte I walked farther down on my ridge top. This was the most exciting experience to witness, the stallion keeping his herd together and moving them wherever he wanted them.

Seeing the praire dogs was something I was really looking forward to because I had never seen them before. I think my first day there I spent quite a bit of time photographing them. I assigned myself a photography challenge to catch one standing on hind legs, doing his little leap thing, while squeaking I suppose, his alerting his fellow doggies of potential danger making a clicking noise. While I did get one standing on his hind legs, I didn’t get it of his feet leaving the ground. So maybe I halfway met the challenge?

One of my exciting catches was that of a coyote. He was working one of the buttes in search of prey I presume. It was amazing how fast he could zip up and down the buttes! After a burst of energy he would strike a pose allowing us to get numerous snaps. Even better is the fact that we could shoot from the car window

Pronghorn are so photogenic and I never tire of photographing them! Their color patterns and markings are striking and when they run they are so fast it’s a challenge to keep up with them photographically speaking. I saw pronghorn on several occasions but most of them took off before I could snap a picture.

For the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of the skies...
Lord of all to thee we raise, this our joyful hymn of praise!

Saw this busy mama with her 9 babies trying to keep them out of the road.

When we first got to the park, seeing the bison was a pretty exciting happening. Even though I have seen plenty at Yellowstone and even at a reserve we have in my home state of Kentucky, it’s always exciting to these giant masses of muscle and fur awkwardly walking aong the road, crossing the road, or grazing in the grass. But as time went on my excitement of seeing bison diminished in favor of the wild horses. Instead of an enthusiastic, “Oh look!! Theres bison!” it became, “oh. Another bison.” I was humored by a few bison that I was watching during one of their bison parades down the middle of the road as they licked- not ate mind you- but licked the yellow flowers dotting the fields they were grazing in. It was hilarious to see these ginormous heads with a fat tongue sticking out to tenderly lick the delicate yellow flowers. Hearing them growl was a little scary

Watched this bison lick the yellow flowers around him

The elk were elusive. Though we spotted them on a few occasions, they often disappeared before we could get a good snap. Oftentimes it was right at sunrise or sunset that they would come out so there was the added challenge of getting the exposure right in a matter of a few seconds.

Got a lot of shots from this angle
Nature nurtures me
Goodbye wild and beautiful place!

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© 2017 – All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and or duplication of this material without written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided that full credit is given to jantrabuephotography.com with specific directions to the original content.
© 2017 – All rights reserved.