Recently finished the first part of the trip. In a word, amazing! Some technical problems (camera bag took a large fall which made my 70-200 perform a little strange and when combined with a TC would backfocus by 5m...) but was very lucky with the wildlife (glad I took a 70-300 as a backup). I have some good photos of black and grizzly bears, moose including some large bulls, coyotes, big horn sheep, pronghorn, buffalo, beaver, Elk, mule dear, pitkas, yellow bellied marmots, red squirrels, cotton tails, plus the usual small rodents that chase you down like chipmunks and ground squirrels. Saw some wolves in the far far distance.
A few opertunities for landscapes but as I am learning more and more, landscape photography is incredibly challenging and requires years of persistence with a good measure of luck to get the results. The weather was either very clear which led to fairly benign sunrises, or very cloudy and rainy but not in an interesting way. Large parts of the desert trip we had low cloud and rain which made for 1 large softbox which was a little dull. Got lucky in Arches after an evening storm passed giving 10 minutes of amazing lighting, but mostly I was getting up at 4am and some serious hiking and scrambling and being treated to cloud, haze or otherwise dull lighting. The wildlife photos were relatively easy to get, drive around from 6-9am and you were bound to find something of interest. Funnilly enough, the weather in the Tetons and Yellowstone was very good, in the moab desett there was a lot of rain - not thunderstorms, just british style rain for 12 hours.
Currently I'm sorting out some job interviews so no real time to edit, plus on a cheap laptop it is hard to get any colour or exposure accuracy.
Here is a taster though:
