This was a slow year, as far as Yellowstone was concerned. If you followed my trip reports, you probably got a sense of this. I visited the park three times, in April, from late May into June (partly for my spring tour) and in October. None of the trips were what I would call particularly fruitful. There were a few highlights (e.g., seeing otters again for the first time in a while), and I came away with a few nice and different pictures of species like bison and marmots. But overall the sheer variety and volume of sightings I’ve grown accustomed to in the park didn’t happen this year.
As a result, I combined all of the trip photos into a single photo gallery in the archive. You may view the 137 images here. A short preview is below.
There were a few nice opportunities to photograph bison this year, including this bull against a lovely mountain backdrop.
It took some work, but we finally found a badger for my spring tour group in June.
We were fortunate to see this black bear and her yearling cubs a couple times during my spring photo tour.
A herd of elk was silhouetted on a ridge at the end of a long spring day.
The Yellowstone River hosts different species of waterfowl on cold and misty spring mornings in Hayden Valley. My spring tour group stopped to photograph a spectacular sunrise there on Day One.
There were some nice photo ops with marmots (yes, marmots), including some great scenes up in the Beartooth Wilderness.
The otters I saw in Buck Lake were busy hunting for salamanders. It was my first time seeing otters up there in three years.
I saw a lot of swans in Yellowstone this year, from April to October.
A rainbow hit the Lamar Valley just as my tour group was getting out to pose for a group photo at the end of the trip.
View the Yellowstone 2017 gallery here. Remember that you can order prints of nearly image in this and my other galleries.
If you’re interested in joining me on a future Yellowstone photo tour, I have recently opened up a new tour next Fall with limited bookings. Check out the Workshops and Tours page for all of my upcoming trips.
