Another Old Photo Reviewed...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I will sometimes review old photos from hiking and backpacking trips and wonder what I was aiming for when I took them. And sometimes I will know what I was trying to capture but was unable due to problems such as lighting or distance or other factors.

So it was in Tower Canyon in Yellowstone. I had stopped along a trail and could see a tower of rock standing up from the canyon wall (what are commonly referred to as "hoodoos"). Atop this pillar of soft rock and soil was a vast osprey nest. I tried to take photos of it, but the nest and hoodoo were in deep shadow and the background of the canyon wall was in very bright sunlight. The contrast was just too much for my camera to handle.

But I kept taking photos because I could see two large osprey chicks in the nest and a parent arriving from a fishing expedition with a large trout. And I took the photos and tried to see what I had captured after I got back to our lodgings in the Park.

And, in one of the shots, I realized that I'd caught a photo of the two big chicks squabbling over the carcass of the lake trout just delivered by the parent bird. Maybe they were cooperating to tear it apart, or maybe they were fighting over ownership. Either way, each chick had a grasp on the fish.

I had to modify the photo to make clear what I'd managed to get in digital form, but there it was. A moment of small drama captured as an image.

Osprey chicks eating lunch.