Photographing a Model

We left Calgary and moved on to Golden BC so Steve could finally realize his dream of photographing a live model.  The first evening we drove back up to Emerald Lake – a very picturesque spot.

We also saw the natural bridge waterfall where the water has worn a bridge through the rock rather than over it – very interesting.

Finally the morning had arrived Steve had been anxiously waiting for.  We arrived on location and signed the waivers saying we would not sue anyone if the model just happened to turn vicious with disastrous results to any photographers.  Then along with two other photographers and one other wife we traveled a few miles up a dirt road following the vehicle with the model and her alpha male and female handlers.
Here are the rather amazing results of the next couple of hours and hundreds of pictures. 

The wolves at this Northern Lights Wolf Center are all from zoos or other “domesticated” situations and have never lived on their own in the wild.  The people who run it literally treat the wolves like they are all members of a pack and the people are the alpha male & female.  They have a brother and sister this year’s pups they got from a zoo where they were born.  We watched them feed the pups – one at a time – a whole plate of raw hamburger.  That gave a whole new understanding to the term “wolfing down your food”.  As you can see from this final picture they could never survive in the wilderness.

That afternoon we moved to Radium Hot Springs which we had heard had places you could “always” see mountain sheep and goats by the side of the road at mineral licks.  That evening we drove up the valley with some beautiful scenery.

But the only wildlife we saw was this cute little guy.

Back in town we decided to turn and go back to the cliffs where we had spotted a ram on the way into town.  It is right across the streets from apartment houses – not what you would call really wild but at this point we were desperate to see something.  We drove up and could see three big rams eating and two more laying down up on a rather steep grassy hill. No other cars were even stopped. 

So the crazy guy with the big tripod (Steve) decides he needs to climb up there to get a better view – even though he could have been eyeball to eyeball with them with the telephoto lens.  I could see from down on the road once Steve started up the hill there were more rams in the group as they started moving around.  As a result of being invaded by the photographer the rams decided they did not like visitors so came back down the hill right onto the road. 

They just wandered into the road finally going across and then continued to graze along the other side in front of the apartments.  Lots of people came out of their apartments and stopped in their cars to watch by this time.  The locals just honked and tried to drive really close to them to get them out of the road but we (and the other tourons) thought they were cool.

This poor old gentleman looks like he has been around the block a time or two.

Dad in his usual “Mr. Friendly” manner went over to show the campers in the spot next to us the pictures of the big rams and it turns out they are deaf and only could sign ASL! So Dad even smoozes with deaf people!  But they were very excited to see the pictures and Dad drew them a map of how to go find the rams for themselves.