Time for some Montana scenery.

Robert was busy working in the yard,so I went to take photos by myself. There are times when it's good to go alone for it's so much easier to think of camera settings and what you are trying to do with each photo you take. When we're together, we're so busy visiting sometimes it's hard to think about what I want my camera to capture.

I had planned in the begining to stay kind of close to home and didn't think I'd roam further than Freezout Lake. I didn't find many birds, or animals there so I took the road that goes behind Priest Butte, hoping I'd see a coyote, maybe a bear, hopefully some deer or at the very least a raven or a gopher! Nothing. So I concentrated on scenery.

Got back to Choteau, had hardly any photos so I headed toward Pishkin because the mountains were calling to me. I ended up on the Peebles Cut Across Road and took photos of Ear Mountain as I went along.

The landscape was totally bare of animals. I didn't even see birds. I came back toward Choteau and when I got to Eureka lake, I ate my lunch and hoped some birds would fly into or around the trees. Sometimes I see Pelicans on the water there.  No such luck so I enjoyed my cheese and ham, and came home!

Do you love to roam about the countryside? What do you see when you're "out there"?
Donna Ridgway

Nature photography

You might say that nature photography equals patience. I can not tell you the hours I've spent, sitting without moving, just watching and waiting for something to happen. It also requires a knowledge of when and how things might happen in nature.

 I give credit to my patience for watching to the hours I spent on a tractor or swather in the wheat fields, or hay fields when I was a kid. From when I was young we went to the fields early in the morning and outside of a lunch break we were there all day. The more you went round and round the more bored you became and the more you learned to notice each and every thing that happened around you.

You saw when a fox crossed the field, you saw when a sea gull caught a mouse, you noticed if a fly landed on the tractor and watched how tight he could hang on in spite of the vibrations of the engine. You noticed things, and you learned to sit still, because you can't really drive machinery any other way! And you would have died of boredom if you hadn't had nature and it's wonders to view.

You also learned how to deal with the weather, screaming hot in the summer, windy and cold in the fall, it didn't matter, you learned how to take care of yourself and have what gear you might need to be at least a little bit comfortable, or if nothing else, you kept from freezing.

So when I saw the clouds in the photo above, heading toward the top of the mountain, I sat and waited. I watched and waited for quite a while. I kept thinking, if this happens like I think it might, there will be twin towers of sunset clouds over Sawtooth Ridge and won't that be wonderful?

Finally it happened! It doesn't always turn out this way, but this time it did.
I was happy!
Donna Ridgway

Landscape, Square Butte, Vaughn, MT

We live below Square Butte, the butte of Charlie Russell fame. It's always changing, it never looks the same two days or two minutes in a row. I love the way the light plays across it's surface. I decided the other day I need to make more paintings of this wonderful landscape. So here's the first!