Rock Gnome

The morning Ann and I heard the elk bugling was a surprisingly productive morning of photography.  What had started out as a scouting trip had us stopping a couple of times for some very lovely images.  At one point we spent quite a bit of time in the very freezing cold photographing in a rock outcropping.  At one point, Ann said, “That looks like your kind of branch … but how could you ever photograph it?”  Looking over to where she was pointing I agreed with her - on both points.  But after I was done photographing, and Ann still had more she wanted to do, I started looking at the tree and its location and became a man on a mission.

The problem was the branch was sticking out high on a rock, well above our heads, and there wasn’t any way to frame it.  So I looked across the street to see if there was any way to get some elevation and look down on the subject.  Well, it was a steep, loose rocky slope, and some rocks on top that looked, well … dangerous to try to get on top of, but it was worth checking out the rocky area.  

It was more solid than I’d expected and I was able to get about 5-6 feet up.  But now I needed some camera reach and knew exactly what would do the trick.  As I was walking back to Beast Ann asked me, “What’s up?”  “I’m trying to make your photograph and I need the big gun.”

Well, to make a long story short, it turned out better than I imagined it could.  I made 3 images, and I’ll show them all here in the order I made them.

After showing Ann the first image she said, “That looks like a rock gnome!”

And after the second image, “That’s definitely a rock gnome.”

The third image gives a little better idea of the big rock it was on.  The edges of the top, left and right are just off-from in the image below.

It’s interesting to see what you can come up with when challenged!