I’ve started my bighorn sheep photography season. I took last year off from photographing the bighorn. Mostly due to congestion and construction in the area where I normally look for the sheep.

Out this past Wednesday with friend Jim Esten and we easily found a cooperative group to photograph in short order. A good morning overall. No ram combat witnessed on the trip but there was plenty of mating activity and we did manage a few good photographs out of the trip.

Most of what I do with bighorn goes to the stock agencies these days. I try to get at least a handful of photos for stock on these outings, and ended up with an even dozen this time out.

Here are a few samples from the Wednesday outing.

Early morning light in cloudless skies makes for harsh contrasts, but you take what you get.

 

I’ve found the best time to look for the bighorn is the day after a snow storm, as the sheep come down from the higher elevations to get to good grazing grass. I’ll be keeping my eye on the weather reports and will plan more trips around the snow predictions. Luckily, I can get to them in 45 minutes of driving.

On a side note, my main camera, the Nikon D810 is getting a little old and the rubber grip on the memory chip access door peeled off.  I’ve got it cleaned up and will glue it back on the camera in the near future.. First time that’s happened to me on a Nikon body. I don’t feel like sending it to Nikon to be fixed, as the camera works fine. I think I can get it glued back on without creating a mess. I’ll report back with the results of that effort.

It always makes for a fun morning.