Time to do some photography! Dan and I made a quick photo excursion to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We picked a place we could get to in a (long) day’s drive, and packed food and camping equipment to isolate ourselves. We left Monday morning and got back last night with a lot of photography in between. No time yet to do any significant processing of images, so here’s a few images from Wednesday and a teaser of some things to come. There were quite a few birds, and some to add to my life list and share in the future. This little Killdeer was running around in the grass by our campsite. Pretty easy shooting to sit by the tent and snap a few images.
Killdeer looking over the shoulder
We had clear skies the first two days, which was perfect for one of our goals of some night sky photography, but made for uninteresting light for photography most of the daytime. We hiked or napped during the day. This was from our longest hike up to a view from Saddle Pass looking south to the Lakota reservation and prairie and farmland which was quite green from all the May rain.
View from Saddle Pass
In addition to birds, several mammals posed for us. The most dramatic were the Bighorn Sheep rams. Later, we found the ewes and lambs, and it was hard to stop taking images of the playful lambs. Here’s a more sedate ram whose horns have seen some aging.
Bighorn ram
Most of the badland features have a limited color palette from gray to dusky red, but some of the oldest rock is a colorful yellow. The Yellow Mounds area has the best display of this feature, and the clear blue sky was a nice contrast.
Yellow Mounds
Tuesday ended waiting for the Milky Way to show. The sun had set over an hour earlier, but there was still some faint color in the west. The crescent moon joined Castor and Pollux from the constellation Gemini. Since Dan and I are both Geminis, it was some favorable light to shoot under. Hope you enjoyed this tasting menu of scenes from South Dakota.
Moon, Pollux and Castor