Raccoon – Northwest Trek

12. June 2012 · Comments Off on Raccoon – Northwest Trek · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

A Northwest Trek tour really has two parts.  You get taken around the 435 acre “free-range” area in a tram where you check out all the “safe” animals (the herbivores), and then you walk around what I guess you would consider a traditional zoo and check out the “dangerous” ones (the carnivores).

The tram ride is awesome.  The deer, moose and bison come right up to the tram and you get to see them in a way you never would in the wild.  The walking part though can be a bit of a disappointment.  I’ve visited Northwest Trek twice now and the carnivores really aren’t great.  This visit they were all hiding, we didn’t really see anything.  We stood in front of a large enclosure that said Grizzly Bear and all we could see was trees and bushes.  This same thing happened with the Black Bear, Bobcat, Cougar, Lynx, Wolf, Fox and Coyote.  We didn’t see any of them.

However there were a few animals on the walking tour we did see.  One of them was the raccoon.  There were two of them in a relatively small enclosure (always seems a little cruel to me) and they were very playful.  Interestingly none of these enclosures had bars, animals were separated from us by water or electric fences.  While this was good for us (nothing in the way) it seemed a little crappy for the animals.

Anyway the two raccoons were playing together (may have been fighting I don’t know – I’m no raccoon expert), they were climbing on some fallen trees and jumping on each other.  They move pretty fast so it was hit or miss if the pictures came out in focus and I took one fantastic pic with one of the raccoon’s hanging from a branch by one leg staring straight into the camera – but it wasn’t sharp enough to post.

In the end I liked the picture below.  This raccoon was posing almost to camera and stood still long enough for me to get this shot.  Would have been better if I had got the raccoon’s feet in too, but you can’t have everything.

Tonight the guys wanted to have a little party, they had some music, did a little dancing…

Elk – Northwest Trek

11. June 2012 · Comments Off on Elk – Northwest Trek · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I thought tonight I’d post an animal shot from my weekend trip to Northwest Trek.  I wanted to post something impressive so I decided I’d start with a bull Elk.  These were amazing animals and are one of the largest species of deer in North America.  They live in and on the edge of forest land, live off plants, grass, leaves and bark and are native to North America and Eastern Asia.

The males (known as bulls) have large antlers, these are covered in a fine fur or velvet.  Some ranches in the US collect Elk antlers for this velvet and sell it in Asia where it’s used for medicine – in some cultures it’s considered an aphrodisiac – yuk.  The good news is this doesn’t hurt the Elk as they lose their antlers every year.

The tour guide taking us round told us that as the antlers contain blood which feeds the velvet and when the Elk start to rub their antlers against trees (or fight each other), they sometimes end up walking about covered in blood – sounds lovely!  The guide said it looks worse than it is – what I want to know is how does he know?  He’s not an Elk!

When the antlers fall off at Northwest Trek (they start growing in Spring and fall off in Winter), they are left on the floor as a number of animals (including Elk) chew on them.  Sounds disgusting I know but we were told they contain minerals the animals need.  We were also told that the Elk live in herd’s and the bull with the biggest antlers get’s all the cows (female Elk).

The one in this picture was looking pretty pleased with himself, and no matter what we did, he just stared, I suspect he was the dominant male and was keeping an eye on us.   The park had a pretty big herd and they are clearly used to visitors and just wander around the park.  You start to wonder after a while who is watching who.  There we were stuck in a small bus with no windows and the Elk had the run of the place.  Still pretty cool though.

Tonight Carter was left at home alone so he decided to play with his toys, I mean action figures!

Northwest Trek – Eatonville

10. June 2012 · Comments Off on Northwest Trek – Eatonville · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

This morning (which is a Sunday – I don’t know when people will read this blog), I got up at 5:30am to drive to Eatonville in Washington with a photographer friend (Chris) to visit Northwest Trek.

Northwest Trek is a Wildlife Park for animals that are native to the Pacific Northwest.  So no Lions and Tigers, but definitely some bears – oh my!  The park offer a Photographers tour but you have to get there at 8am and it’s around 70 miles from where we live.  I’ve been before and remember the roads as being pretty crappy so we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time.

I picked up Chris at 6am, and at 7:10 we arrived.  I was well annoyed!  I mean I could have stayed in bed another 50 minutes!  That said we were not the first photographers there, and we were let into the park a little early.  In all there were 14 people on the tour and it started at 8am on the dot.

The wildlife park is 723 aches and was founded in 1971 by David and Connie Hellyer.  Dr. Hellyer purchased the original 500 aches for $4.95 an ache after a big fire damaged a lot of the woodland, and initially built himself a summer home.  In the early 1970’s he wanted to open a park to all but needed the backing of the state park.  In the end he gave away the land and even contributed his own money to pay for the parks opening.  Dr. Hellyer owned a house in the center of the park and stayed there for free until the day he died.

The photographer tour involved a Tram Tour around the 435 ache “free-range” area where all the herbivores live.  We drove around for two hours before the park officially opened stopping whenever we wanted taking load of pics.  I took over 900 and will be posting animal pictures for some time to come.  So lots of shots of bighorn sheep, bison, mountain goats, black-tailed deer, moose, Roosevelt elk, white-tailed deer, woodland caribou, barren-ground caribou, and trumpeter swans (in case you asked).

However I thought I’d start with a picture of the entrance to the park – here you go…

Carter and Master Chief have found a new way to relax, they call it Bitch ‘n Stitch.

Night Skyline – Seattle

09. June 2012 · Comments Off on Night Skyline – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

You have to be careful going out after dark with a camera as you can get overly addicted to these kind of night shots.  I drove to Seattle to get a neon image of Pike Place at night and decided to drive around town after to see what I could find.  I went down to the waterfront to shoot some of the piers and went looking for somewhere to park.

Across the road from the waterfront is the Seattle Alaskan Way Viaduct.  This carries the SR 99 from north to south Seattle and is soon going to be torn down.  Under the viaduct (or really just past under the viaduct) is a car park.  I pulled in, to park the car so I could go and shoot the piers and thought the city buildings looked great.  So I grabbed this shot.  As it was pretty late there weren’t too many people walking around but as you can see there were still some cars left.

Ironically, I liked this shot more than the piers I photographed, so I thought I’d post it tonight.

This is a long exposure with a small aperture which gives me the star looking lights and brings out the night blue sky.

Had to do some home improvements this weekend, the Halo guys stepped in to help out and stopped for a picture!

Bears – Redmond

08. June 2012 · Comments Off on Bears – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

In the middle of Redmond Town Center is this seating area that surrounds a couple of fountains.   On the brick tiled flooring are three bear statues.  I took this picture quite late at night and nobody was around (no security guards either).  I wanted to bring out the texture in the brick floor and statues so this is an HDR image (what a surprise).

Obviously as this is late at night it’s a slow exposure, so you get to see the water almost frozen in time.  When I composed this I wanted the bears to be the primary subject, so I made them quite big in the frame.  In hindsight I wish I’d pulled back a little and showed more of the seating area.  As a result I didn’t post this image.  However someone saw this the other day and commented on the picture so I thought, what the heck!

This area always makes me smile.  My son James is almost 15 years old but I remember him running through these fountains getting soaking wet with his cousins, and then stripping off totally naked in the car park to change clothing.  Of course he wouldn’t be seen dead doing that now.  I reckon in another 5 years and after some time at college and he will once again be stripping off and running though fountains.

This weekend will be interesting.  On Sunday I’m off to Northwest Trek, which is a wildlife park for animals that are indigenous to the Pacific North West.   However it’s looking like it’s going to rain so I may end up with lots of pictures of empty wood.  Time will tell, so keep your fingers crossed for a dry weekend.

Tonight the guys decided to play BopIt! – They didn’t do too well though.

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