June In The Rockies

Hello everyone,

So it looks like my 'one blog post a week' plan has already failed miserably! I apologize for the lack of posts recently, but my time has been spent looking for a job as well as looking for bears and other wildlife.

After returning to Canada nearly two months ago, I've finally decided to get a job so that the basic existence that I've been living, can finally come to an end. I start training in Monod's, an outdoor store, on Monday and I'm going to have to get used to a productive routine again after over a year without working. I'm also very fortunate that my new manager has kindly organized my shifts so that I still have every morning free to photograph.


The last few weeks have been pretty amazing for me. I've spent a lot of time looking for a 22 year old grizzly bear and her three newborn cubs. Unfortunately, I've only managed to spot her once and didn't manage to get any photographs. However, I had a lot of luck with other wildlife in June. I finally had a couple of wolf encounters which is what I'd been hoping for this spring. Only one of these encounters yielded a photograph but it just happens to be my favourite wolf shot to date.

'Blizzard', a two-year old female wolf - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

It had been almost exactly one year to the day that I encountered 'Blizzard' last. To see her again and spent twenty minutes photographing her was one of then nicest feeling I've had in a long time. It's so great to see that she's still surviving and looking healthy as ever!

This recent wolf photo is a new favourite of mine, but I've also managed to photograph a lot of other amazing animals over the last few weeks.

Here's a few of my top images from the last month...

(click on an image to enlarge)

Black bear cub in a tree - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Pileated woodpecker chicks - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bighorn sheep ram - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Grizzly bear grazing - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Subadult grizzly bear in fresh spring snow - Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

Large male grizzly bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Beaver eating along riverbank - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Great blue heron - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear resting - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear cub in a tree - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Pileated woodpecker feeding her chicks - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bighorn sheep ram overlooking Medicine Lake - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Wet black bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Cinnamon black bear sow and cub - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

July isn't considered a great month for wildlife photography, so I won't be getting out to shoot as much this month. I'm going to focus on work for a while and I've also got my summer stall to run at the Banff farmer's market every Wednesday. The recent postal strike here in Canada meant that I had very limited stock for the first market day of the summer. The wind and rain didn't help the situation either! I'm praying for blue skies next Wednesday and hopefully things will pick up.

If you're in Banff this summer, come along to the market and say hello! I also have a 'Save Banff's Wildlife' petition with me on the stall which I will be sending to Parks Canada, CP Rail and local MP Mr Blake Richards. Hopefully it will help put them under pressure to do something about the wildlife mortality rate here in Banff as well as spread awareness of the issue.


I've recently opened an account on the popular photo sharing website '500px'. You can view a selection of my most popular photos from around the world as well as vote for which are your favourites.


All photographs are available to purchase. Please send me a message via my website if you have any questions.

Thank you for reading,

Cai

Jasper In June

Spring is here so I thought I'd write a post about one of my favourite photography trips.

Last year I spent the whole month of June photographing wildlife in the Canadian Rockies. I hired a driver for the entire month and we spent everyday except for a few on the road looking for critters. Some of the areas we covered were quite remote so we slept in the back of the car each night. These places included Banff and Jasper National Park as well as Kananaskis.

I hadn't spent much time in Jasper prior to this, so I decided to spend most of the month in the park to see what all the fuss was about.

During this time I managed to photograph wolves, bear cubs (both black and grizzly), moose, mountain goat, porcupine and even a newborn lynx kitten.

Here are a few of my favourites...

Black bear cub - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Lynx mother with newborn kitten - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Loon with chick - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Red fox - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Medicine Lake - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear cub - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Mule deer - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Mountain goat with kid - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Porcupine - Jasper National Park, Alberta

I'm hoping to return to Jasper this June to see if I can find some of the same animals that I photographed last year. Hopefully the luck I had then will be with me this spring too.

If you have any questions, you can message me via the contact sheet on my website.

Thank you for reading,

Cai

Fantastic Mr. Fox

So here we are. After months of hard work I’ve finally launched my new website. This site contains some of my favourite photographs from my travels over the past two years and I’m pleased that you’re now able to view all of these images in one place.

I will be updating this blog with stories behind some of the more exciting and memorable wildlife encounters I’ve been lucky enough to experience.

I’m living the city life back in Wales at the moment, so exciting wildlife encounters are few and far between. I will start this blog off with the tale behind one of my most popular photographs, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’.

A Red Fox poses for me in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

During one of my photography trips to Jasper last year I spent many hours searching for a Red Fox to photograph along the Maligne Lake road. I had read in the information center that a fox had been seen several times that week on this amazing stretch of road. After many long hours driving back and forth along this road over several days without even a glimpse of a fox, I was starting to doubt that I would ever see one of these amazing animals in the mountains.

With my frustration becoming obvious, my driver Emma suggested we take a break and head into town to collect a jacket I had left with a friend a few days earlier. My friend Simone happened to work in a hotel on the edge of the Jasper townsite, so we pulled up to the entrance and I went inside. When I returned less than five minutes later, Emma was almost speechless.

''You missed a fox'', she said.

''Very funny'', I replied, wondering why she had decided to joke about our bad luck when I was clearly frustrated.

She held out her camera for me to look at and sure enough there it was, a small red fox walking past the car about a foot from where I was standing at the hotel’s main entrance. I couldn’t believe it! I turned to Simone and told her what had just happened. She smiled and told me that she sees that fox nearly everyday as it chases after the local ground squirrels.

I quickly grabbed my camera from the front seat of the car and ran in the direction of the fox. I came across a couple of people walking around behind the hotel and asked them if they had seen a fox pass by. After being pointed in couple of different directions and wondering around for nearly 15 minutes, I began to think that the fox had disappeared and that I’d missed my best chance of photographing one. I turned to head back to the car and all of a sudden there it was, walking towards me no more than 20 feet away!

Red Fox chewing a piece of wood - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

This fox was clearly used to humans and didn’t seem at all bothered by my presence as I knelt down in front of it and began snapping away. After about five minutes of posing, he turned and walked away towards the forest. I followed, walking almost alongside him which felt like I was out walking my dog. It was quite a hot day, but instead of heading into the shade of the trees, this fox chose to curl up beneath an old trailer at the back of the car park! Perhaps he’d had enough of the peski photographer following him or maybe he was just really tired. I decided that one last photo would be enough so I sat down on the ground, so close I could have reached out and patted him on the head. I took my final photograph and after checking it briefly on my camera’s LCD screen, I got up slowly and walked away.

The fox sleeping beneath a disused trailer - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

And so that is where I left him, curled up asleep with his back resting against the tire of an old trailer. It was not what I was expecting for my first encounter with a wild fox, but what an amazing experience nonetheless!

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Thank you.

Cai