An average day with average light can become an interesting landscape if you stick a person in there. (Of course, Lake McDonald is rarely average, but you get the drift.) People lend a sense of scale to landscapes. Some purists don't like people in their landscape photos and that's OK. All I know is in the Hungry Horse news archives we have tons of landscapes and the most interesting ones have humans in them. The mountains in Glacier just don't change much. The Garden Wall today looks like the Garden Wall in '48. But the Garden Wall with a woman in a dress and a man in a suit from the '50s ... well, that's interesting.

So grab your kids or your wife or gramma or grandpa and even a perfect stranger and stick them in your frame once in awhile.

Cow elk, downpour.

Went into a favorite valley over the past three days. On the way in it was approaching 80. On the way out, a wind driven downpour with little hope of relief — in fact, the snow level was dropping lower and lower as I left. It's tough to get good pictures in a driving rain. Gore-tex or not, water runs down your back and your sleeves. I have a system where the dry stuff stays in the tent, then I wear the wet stuff outside. You keep the wet stuff on one end of the tent and the dry on the other. But when it rains this hard, it's tough to keep the water out, because you're so damn wet yourself. I actually had a permit to stay another day, but figured I would have had to hole up in the tent and then hope the weather got better. It didn't. It rained all last night again and looks pretty black out there right now, even though the sun is creeping through the clouds. Still, I got some pretty good images. Photographing elk in Glacier Park is a challenge. The herds leave the confines and get shot at by hunters, so they're very wary of humans. It's not like Yellowstone where they walk down the sidewalks. Still, trying to make good pictures of elk is always fun. Even in the rain.

I don't think it matters which system a photographer shoots anymore. Nikon and Canon are just about the same — great cameras, great lenses. A few years ago, I'd give a big edge to Canon, but Nikon's D3 and D300 are very good cameras. I use a D300 because I like the smaller sensor — it makes the 400 a 600 and with a 1.4 teleconverter the 600 becomes an 840mm. Nikon's early digital cameras sucked. The D1 was awful and the D2H nearly as bad. My favorite camera for people and landscapes continues to be my Leica M6. I can carry it in a pocket and take a quick picture and people don't even notice until you walk up and ask them their name. It also slows you down and makes you think about what you're doing. Everything is manual — the meter, the aperture, the focus. I shoot maybe 20-40 rolls of film a year. All of it Fuji Velvia. It's a great alpenglow film. Being a rangefinder, you can also hand hold at very slow shutter speeds — I've hand held many a picture at 1/15th of a second and more than a few at 1/8th of a second.

For wildlife and birds it's all Nikon digital. The autofocus is extremely fast and the lenses are great, but heavy and expensive. The Nikon D300 with a 400mm lens and a monopod weighs 14 pounds — add a full pack with tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes and survival gear and you're carrying 50 to 60 pounds — heavier than that in the winter. At least in the winter you can use a sled. People ask if it's worth it, particularly if they see me slogging up some switchbacky trail with all that crap.

It's always worth it, I say.

Just don't ask my back.

Granite Park, evening light, Glacier National Park.

It always helps to get in a good spot and then coach the hell out of the light: Like this: C'mon sun, c'mon boy! That's it! That's it! Right there! It will make you a better photographer (or just look a little nuts). Take your pick.

Did a 20-plus mile traverse over the weekend — a classic hike — Gunsight Pass. Lots of up and down. On the down side ran into this cow moose feeding. A nice way to end a grunt of a hike. Full pack plus a 14-pound camera and lens combo wears you down. On the other hand, if you don't have it with you, you don't get photos like this. Such is life.