North & South Dakota Trip

Another great series Scott! ; I really like the first one and the self portrait. ; You have shared some really amazing shots from your trip! ; Keep the coming!

 

Thanks, John. ; Traveling to Minneapolis tomorrow and a stubborn cold is keeping me from uploading today's photos. ; Will add LOTS more when I get home later this week.

 

nice shots Scott. get well and keep posting

 

Health first, photos later.

 

you just have to press the shutter between sneezes

 

Oh, I kept shooting, Howie. ; After getting back from Mount Rushmore, we visited the North section of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is 50 miles north of the Medora south unit entrance.

Little Missouri River bottomland valley.


Rock striations more defined than in the south section.


Same old friends.


with some additional autumn colors.


Oh, and some new friends...a herd of Bighorn Sheep.


Lead by a big Ram who kept track of all his harem.


A young ram who may have thoughts of challenging...someday.

 

Again, amazing stuff Scott! ; I really like the first one! ; I think I am partial to landscape shots!

 

Nice work Scott! ;

Yeah, inside the car is much better when they're that close, although a ranger told me once that a bison can put a horn through your car door pretty easily. ; They can go from lying on the ground to standing up and running toward you faster than you can stand up and they can easily outrun a human even if they're in 3ft of snow and you're not. ; Not to mention that the hump on their neck is solid muscle so they can use their head to brush snow out of the way so they can eat the grass underneath...

 

Thanks, Michael! ; I saw that snow removal behavior when I visited the park in January by the bison.

 

Hope you don't mind me keeping this going. ; Been pretty busy since I got the first batch of photos processed and now going back to work on the HDR sets I took. ; The Sculptor's Studio shows a scale sculpture of what Mount Rushmore was supposed to look like. ; However, the mountain did not yield as much sculpting granite as they had hoped.

The sculptor's studio was built in 1939 for sculptor Gutzon Borglum. ; The studio is a tough shot if you want to have both the scale sculpture AND the finished mountain in the frame. ; Here's the best I could do with one image.



Here's the 7 image HDR image.

 

Couldn't help the glass, Roger, there are two panes and they did not match up. ; One was darker than the other. ; I am not 100% happy with that HDR. ; I'll get it better.

I was hoping for a colorful sunset with lots of reds, blues and purples. ; Alas, it was not to be but I used 5 images for this HDR.

 

Really like that last one, super!

 

Thanks, guys! ; Got the latest version of Photomatix's Plugin for Aperture which uses the 4.0 technology. ; Warning for those using Aperture, there is a known problem and you have to go to full screen mode with the selected photos before selecting to Edit with Photomatix. ; Apple is aware of the problem and is working on it.

 

All of these shots are great Scott. ; I really like that last one, fantastic!

 

Nicely done Scott. ; I did not see that angle inside the studio, although it was jam packed when I was there. ; Was that last shot taken on the road up to the mountain? ; Nice perspective!

 

Paul, I can imagine Mt. Rushmore is packed during the summer months. ; There were only about 25 people at any one time in the studio while I was there.

Nope, that last one was taken from the top row of the amphitheater at 28mm focal length from a tripod. ; We were waiting for the evening lighting ceremony to start. ; I was hoping for more color but I have nothing to complain about the image I came away with.

You got any of your trip photos online?

 

Just the few on my blog.....I need to get my act together and revamp my web site a bit to accommodate them.