A Photo A Day For The Month Of August

I don't post on this blog quite as often as I would like to.  Work, family and other activities seem to get in the way and take up a lot of my time.  After my recent trip to Yellowstone National Park, I decided that I would try to post a photo a day for the month of August.  Most of these photos I have already taken, I'm just spreading out the posting.  Most will be new to this blog, but there could be a couple that you have seen before.

Photography is one of my oldest hobbies.  The nice thing about it is that it can be used in most other sports, hobbies and activities.  Whether it is fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking or geocaching, bringing a camera along can make that experience last forever.  I decided that a personal photo challenge would help encourage me to look through my photos and maybe even take a few new photographs to include with the others.

So tune in tomorrow and the entire month of August to see a new photo each day.  If you have any questions, or have an idea for an article that I should write, let me know in the comment section below.

Lures For Salmon Fishing

What are your favorite lures for salmon fishing?  I am far from a salmon fishing expert, but I love chasing Kokanee salmon in the Colorado reservoirs that have them. I've posted a little about it before Here.

The lures that have worked the best for me so far are the Rocky Mountain Tackle Company Assassin and Signature Squid series. I bought a few new colors for an upcoming trip.  I ordered directly from their website and they shipped quickly and they even threw in an extra lure.  The colors I picked to add are those pictured below:

I typically troll these behind lead core line and downriggers depending on the depths I'm fishing. My most productive colors in order have been pink, orange, chartreuse and green. For this trip I'm adding a few new variations to try. 

What are your favorite salmon lures?  Let me know in the comment section below.

Update:

Here is a video I added while I was down at Blue Mesa Reservoir.  It adds some additional info about the lures and methods we were using.

Lower Falls- Yellowstone National Park

I spent a week in Yellowstone at the end of June and beginning of July.  If you haven't been there, Yellowstone National Park is one of the most amazing examples of wilderness in the lower 48.  There is beautiful scenery, incredible hours and awesome thermal features to enjoy.  I have quite a few photos from Yellowstone to include, but thought I would start off with this one.

This is probably Yellowstone's most iconic waterfall, known as Lower Falls.  The canyon surrounding the waterfall is known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  As you can see from the picture below, the yellow canyon walls led to the title "Yellowstone."  We arrived at the falls just in time to capture a rainbow forming from the mist at the base of the waterfall.

Click on the link below to view a larger version of this photo:



Lower Falls- Yellowstone National Park by Luke Parr

Watching Grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park is one of my favorite Rocky Mountain destinations.  Not only is there amazing and unique scenery with many thermal features, water falls and mountains, but there are few places in the lower 48 states that allow you to see the selection of wildlife that Yellowstone offers.

Coming from Colorado, some of my favorite animals to see are the Grizzlies and Wolves. We have a lot of animals around Colorado, but we don't have any of those two species left in the state.   We ended up seeing three different Grizzlies in different areas of the park. We came across one that was feeding on an Elk carcass. That bear wore a radio collar and I photographed him for about half an hour.

While I was photographing I decided to try shooting some video. Below is a quick video, just over a minute long of th bear feasting. Enjoy!

Timelapse from Cottonwood Creek

This is a short (just over a minute) timelapse from a camping trip next to Cottonwood Creek, which is near Buena Vista, Colorado.  I shot it with a GoPro HD Hero 2 set to to take pictures at one second intervals.  I don't have an LCD back or wireless transmitter for the GoPro, so I would take a picture, pull out the card and put it into my Canon 60D to view the photo.  Then I would make adjustments and do it again.

I hope you enjoy it: