C&T Publications Eye on Fine Art Photography - July 2014 | Page 8

Plan your drive to get the most daylight during the scenic portions. Leaving Chicago for Southern California I left around 1 pm. this
gave me some daylight for farms and barns but allowed me to drive through the night to Denver. Lots of beautiful farmland passed
in the dark but my preference is for mountains and wild lands.
Leaving Denver at around 5 am allowed me maximum photo ops in the mountains and deserts that followed. It also meant I
captured the golden hour at dawn and again at sunset.

Rocky Mountain Sheep Taken from the Interstate Shoulder

Rest areas in some western states are called “view area” or “scenic overlook” and are usually worth the stop. Sometimes there is
not a good place to stop. The sheep were shot from a wide area on an interstate shoulder and I do not recommend stopping
anywhere that puts you in danger. In this case I was able to pull good 20 or more feet off to the side and shoot down into a canyon
below. I was looking for some shots of the beautiful red rock walls of the canyon and the sheep were a bonus.

It is believed that two hundred years ago, bighorn sheep, found throughout the western US, Canada, and northern Mexico had a
population of over 2 million. By circa 1900 competition for grazing land with domestic farm animals and over-hunting had decreased
the population to several thousand. A program of reintroductions, natural parks, and reduced hunting, together with a decrease in
domesticated sheep near the end of World War II, allowed the bighorn sheep to make a comeback. The Bighorn is on the Endangered
Species list and now has a population of about 600.

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