Last week I introduced a new gallery on my nature photography website HogbatsPhotography.com; wildflowers and butterflies being the colorful and smallest parts of the Wind River Canyon people never see.  Never having planned on a gallery for all the many digital files of wildflowers and butterflies I'd accumulated, this is going to be a true labor of love, because now I will photograph the rare flowers with the knowledge I've gained photographing Hummingbirds and Bighorn Sheep in this magical Wyoming canyon over the last decade.

     And to that end I begin with something that I know most people in Wyoming and the Wild West, and for that matter everyone else on this blue marble have never, ever seen.  You see, while I was researching the blog about the wildflowers called Shooting Stars, I read that every once in a while a rare White Shooting Stars flower will appear.  Just like the Albino Bighorn Sheep that once lived in the canyon, this white flower is exceedingly rare among a sea of wildflowers.  Since I know that they are blooming right now, I spent time hiking up the mountain to the one spot I know quite well.

     We'd gotten a light rain the night before, and I expected a little mud, but only the northern slope where the Shooting Stars were blooming was damp.  But wow, did the Shooting Stars wildflower area grow; it's now four times the size it was just a few days before.  Taking a million cautious steps around the hillside, I hunted for over an hour and found only one lonely, rare White Shooting Stars wildflower.

     The sky was a brilliant blue and the white flower would have been over-exposed something awful, so I used an old snow-time trick and upped the exposure by two-thirds.  It worked beautifully as I sat down in the wet, sloping field and shot merrily away after I found the angle I needed.  Then I hunted the canyon hillside for more White Shooting Stars....and found none!  There are hundreds and hundreds of Shooting Stars blooming on this sloping field, but just this one specimen existed on the mountain.  So I sat back down and photographed this rare wildflower again, just to be sure.                                                    Wildflowers, White Shooting Stars - Wind River Canyon, Wyoming.Rare White Shooting Stars, Wildflowers-Wind River Canyon, WY        It's a perfect blooming set that was a real lucky find, but it snowed hard a few days later, and I'm going up later today to see how the hardy Shooting Stars are faring.  ISO 100, 1/320 @ f/9 with my favorite lens - Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS; I used it because it's lighter to carry and scary sharp pictures always result.  

     Another of Wyoming's wonderful wildflowers are the Wild Rose.  They bloom in June and the smell is so fantastic that you have to smell them for yourselves, because they make those expensive things I've paid way too much for smell like old socks.  The smell of a Wild Rose is so intense that nothing on a store shelf even comes close, and it's one of Mother Nature's real Summer treats for the senses.  

     This particular Wild Rose was shot last June, and I'd never, ever seen a spider like this on a flower.  I don't know, and don't care what this spider's name is; he probably doesn't either.  But the spider was in shade and I remember it being a pain in the tookis to shoot.  Just this very morning I worked the best file in DPP (Canon Digital Photo Professional) and Adobe Lightroom 5.7.  It's so cool that I had to include it in the new gallery.  It was photographed with my favorite lens, which I'd just received; this was a first test, and it's beautiful, yet creepy somehow.                                                                                                    Wild Rose with Spider - Wind River Canyon, WyomingWild Rose with Spider in Wind River Canyon, Wyoming.      The scientific name for the Wild Rose is Rosa woodsii, and that makes people smile, as Latin usually does.  They get little red berries called rose hips and are very high in vitamin C, among some other interesting ones.  They are beautiful, smell amazing, and are good for you; what other Wyoming Wildflower can say all of that?

     I wish that the internet could provide the smell for you, but it cannot, so come round in June to the Wind River Canyon for the best smell in the world....you won't forget it, and that's a promise.

Writing, photography, digital darkroom, and cheap nerdy laughs by Michael John Balog

Hogbats Photography

Wind River Canyon.........Wyoming

Thank you once again for reading my blog about the Wind River Canyon.  I hope you learn a little something.