100 days in Glacier National Park

A photographer's journey

100 days In Glacier National Park

This blog chronicles photos of Glacier National Park over 100 consecutive days, starting on May 1, 2009 by Glacier Park Magazine editor Chris Peterson. When the project is complete, it will be a traveling show in 2010 to commemorate Glacier's Centennial. I'm using a mix of film and digital cameras, including an 8 by 10 field camera, a Kodak Pocket Vest camera, circa 1909, and a Speed Graphic, among others. The idea is to use the cameras that would have been used over the course of the Park's 100 years. Day-to-day work is done primarily with a Nikon digital camera, since I only process film about once a week due to time constraints (I have a regular job on top of this project).

Day 89, Forest primeval

29/July/2009

I went back into the big cedars of Glacier. It was a dark and gloomy evening with rain threatening. As I was about to leave and it was close to dark I heard songbirds having fits in the trees. The reason? A brood of barred owls. Barred owls have a wide ranging diet that includes songbirds. All told, I saw three owls. Despite the dark, I was able to jam the monopod into the Earth and stabilize the camera next to a tree. Shooting a 400mm at 1/30th of a second without blur is not easy. An owl's main defense is to sit still. If the songbirds weren't chattering at it, I would have never seen it.