Mink Stole Trout

While scouting a location on the Boise River last week a mink swam by with a freshly caught trout in its mouth. I think he was using an elk-hair caddis.

Pinto Bennett, Back Soon

For my project "Where Music Lives" I recently photographed iconic Idaho singer/songwriter Pinto Bennett at his sheep camp home outside Hammett. Pinto is doing mostly gospel these days and has a new album, "Back Soon," coming out. He shares his sheep wagon with a dog, a cat, a Danelectro guitar and a Fender amp.

Where Music Lives: Rosalie Sorrels

Since last Spring I have been photographing musicians at their homes and personal spaces. I've wanted to create portraits of musicians in the environments they have chosen and created, places where they are  most grounded -- where music lives. On Tuesday I visited Rosalie Sorrels at her storied Grimes Creek home -- on land her grandfather settled and in a house her father built by hand. Here she plays "Nevada Moon" under the rapt attention of her dog Dudley while the afternoon light of autumn filters through trees planted  generations ago.

Changing of the Seasons on the South Fork Snake

Just my personal opinion, but there is no better place to experience the turning of autumn than the South Fork Snake River canyon.

Fighters & Friends on the Middle Fork

I never take a Middle Fork Salmon River trip for granted: floating 100 miles of crystal clear water running through the heart of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is always a gift. But it is often easy to take for granted the fact that there IS a crystal clear Middle Fork and a 2.3 million acre wilderness surrounding it. These things seem so obviously right that anything else -- a dam, clearcut forests, an open pit mine -- seem inconceivable now. But of course it was only by the work of dedicated people that the Middle Fork and places like it are still the wild and untrammeled lands they are today.

Last week I rafted the Middle Fork with several of those individuals -- Bill Arthur, Debbie Sease, Jim Blomquist, Rose Kapolczynski, Russ Shay, Ken Gersten--who met one another in the early 70s as young environmental activists and are now senior leaders in organizations like the Sierra Club and the Land Trust Alliance. They're still fighting the good fight, working to keep places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from becoming an oil field. Should they succeed, future generations will no doubt find it crazy that the arctic plains would be anything less than the magnificent, wild and pristine land of caribou and wolf and polar bear. It will be so obviously right. But not without the passion and work of people like my new good friends. Thanks.

25th Twilight Criterium

Saturday was the 25th annual Twilight Criterium bike race, one of those events that makes one happy and proud to live in Boise. The final pro-mens race lasts 90 minutes, with the 100-plus riders averaging speeds of 25-30 miles per hour on the circuit through downtown Boise. That's about how fast I average riding DOWN from the Bogus Basin ski resort.

Missing the Boat

Sometimes missing the boat opens up new opportunities. Such was the case last Sunday when we missed the 5 pm shuttle boat on Redfish Lake that would deliver us from the end of the lake back to Redfish Lake Lodge and our car which we planned on driving to our friends' cabin where we planned on preparing an elk roast dinner. Finally arriving at the lodge at 7:30 pm we were too late for a long drive and dinner but just in time for a free outdoor concert on the lawn by bluegrass band Barefoot. It was a classic Rocky Mountain summer scene -- live music and dancing bodies on a perfect July evening below the Sawtooth Mountains.

Craters to Pioneers

On Monday I flew with EcoFlight, a nonprofit environmental flying service, to photograph the Craters-Pioneers landscape of central Idaho. This vast, largely undeveloped landscape ranges from the lava flows of Craters of the Moon National Monument to the snow-covered peaks of the Pioneer Mountains. The Pioneers Alliance, a coalition of ranchers, farmers, agencies and conservationists, is working to sustain the natural and cultural values of this region.

Up a Deep Creek

The Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness is considered the most remote place in lower 48 America. A late spring has kept the streams in this desert landscape running at boatable flows weeks later than normal. We took advantage of this last week on a 4-day canoe trip down Deep Creek to the East Fork Owyhee River.

Owyhee Rocks

The Owyhee River canyon country is mostly rocks -- basalt columns, layers of pink baked clay, welded ash from cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, rhyolite spires, boulders polished by river-borne sand. Floating down the river over the past 4 days we examine the rocks, play with them, and see how the ancient people of this country chiseled their mysteries into the skin of the rocks.

Valet, my mule please

Normally I avoid turning over my camera pack to furry, dull-witted beasts of burden -- but enough about airline baggage handlers. That's my Lowepro camera pack roped down atop a mule after arriving safely at Santa Lucia Lodge, situated high atop a ridge in the cloud forest of northwestern Ecuador. Our duffels are wrapped in plastic and strapped on either side. Virtually everything at Santa Lucia -- all the materials to build the lodge and cabins -- were carried by mules up the muddy trail that climbs 1,640 vertical feet in less than a mile and a half. This remarkable lodge is the economic centerpiece to a community conservation reserve which protects some of the best remaining cloud forest in Ecuador. Here's a link to Santa Lucia's website: http://www.santaluciaecuador.com/index.html

Behind the Photos

The summer ad campaign for Colorado Tourism is released and these are two of my favorites from last summer's shoot with Tom Stofac and Brandon Saunders at MMG Worldwide. The dude ranch image was supposed to be an evening shoot, but a thunderstorm of epic proportions forced us to cancel that after assembling a cast of cowboys, dudes and horses. We reconvened at 5 a.m. the following morning and were rewarded with exceptional light. Then it started raining again.

The Tavern shoot also had its brush with weather, as rain was falling as we were setting up. Eventually the rain let up and we brought up our talent -- 14 young Denverites, each better looking than the last one. The Tavern was busy since a Rockies baseball game next door had recently finished, but we had a section of the deck cordoned off for the shoot. That did not stop one short, weasly-looking individual from breaching the perimeter, walk up to the models at the front table and announce, "You girls are all bitches." Our producer, Liz Long, thought he had said, "You girls are all midgets," and was a bit perplexed. But the male models heard him clearly and all leapt up with an idea to defenestrate our intruder. Realizing he had not called them midgets after all, and fearing the mens' wardrobe was about to mussed in a bar fight, Liz quickly had the individual removed, and the shoot proceeded happily.

Return to the Burn

Last week in Yellowstone I found myself photographing the same location I had photographed over 22 years ago -- the day after it had burned in the great Yellowstone fire of 1988. Here are the before and after images.

Wheel of Life & Death in Yellowstone

The wheel of life and death is close to the surface this time of year in Yellowstone. And not just because most winter visitors tend to be retirees well into their social security years. All the animals are in survival mode, expending as little energy as possible to make it through until spring.

On my first morning in Yellowstone last week I encountered three coyotes working over the remains of an elk that wolves or weather had killed the day before. The formation of the ravens waiting for their piece of the kill created a kind of wheel of life mandala. By the time I left 4 days later, there was not enough left to interest the ravens.