Daily Jim pic 30


I’m doing these in the order that I received them, so blame Jim, but we’re once again hanging out at Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. The wide shot with the light angle is dramatic enough, but the storm in the background adds a bit of atmosphere. This is the kind of composition where you need a dramatic lightning bolt, but that’s really hard in these conditions, since read more

Daily Jim pic 29


This… is why you don’t have pep rallies.

I told you we’d see more, as Jim moves into the interior of the schoolhouse that his grandfather-in-law attended. While I’d like to think it was in better shape then, I’m assuming nothing. To me, it looks like those buildings used in the first atomic tests, though it possibly predates those by fifty years or so.

Actually, I’m read more

Daily Jim pic 28


It appears that I inadvertently deleted the e-mail this was attached to, so I’m thin on details, but I believe this is the schoolhouse that Jim’s grandfather-in-law attended. We’ll see a little more of it shortly. We’re back in Montana, by the way.

Meanwhile, I’m jealous. I would love for any of the schools that I attended to be this decrepit obviously read more

Daily Jim pic 27


Quite a few people don’t know this, but black-tailed prairie dogs will whistle sharply and fiercely when they sense danger.

Even fewer people know this, but they do so with the old country-boy trick of placing a blade of grass in a small gap between thumbs pressed together and blowing strongly. It is one of those remarkably useful things that you learn in adolescence, like making fart noises read more

Daily Jim pic 26


And so we reveal the mystery of two days back, or at least it should be pretty obvious by now (and might have even been obvious then.) This is Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, definitely one of the more curious geological formations in the US, and a major part of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now you can finally place that little musical bar that I provided as a hint.

There are radical read more

Daily Jim pic 25


Jim didn’t tell me whether this black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) was telling him to keep the noise down, or specifying how tall one had to be to get on the ride, or drying its nails, or doing the Macarena. It might just be gay.

Om my god, I’m in so much trouble now for perpetuating stereotypes about prairie dogs, aren’t I?

Sunday slide 33


This is an emerald tree boa (Corallus caninus) – or at least, it was when this was taken back in 2005. In 2009, herpetologists suggested that there was a separate species from a different geographic area, so this one might have changed taxon then when I wasn’t there to witness it.

I would certainly like to be getting such pics in “the wild,” but as yet I have not traveled read more

Your opinion please

I know, that’s a pretty funny thing to ask on a blog that gets no comments whatsoever, but I have an active fantasy life…

Anyway, here are two versions of a view from the beach trip back in May:



So, not a huge difference between them, but a noticeable one. Both were taken at the same focal length (17mm,) but for the second one I crouched a bit to use the railing of the read more

Daily Jim pic 23


We’ve left Montana now and have traveled to Wyoming, in a touristy area. You can tell that last bit from the reaction of the locals, in this case a black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) showing its typical response to photographers. Or at least, photographers that aren’t offering Cheetos.

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