Standing Tall. As I sit here in the kitchen of my Idaho cabin on a gray January morning, I tried to think of a single photograph that defined my year in photography in 2017. For some reason, I kept coming back to this image of a healthy sow grizzly standing against an autumn backdrop in Teton National Park taken in early October.  Bears will often rise up in order to survey their surroundings, using their eyes and keen sense of smell to locate danger or the next food source.  I spent a fair amount of time in Wyoming and Montana in late September and October very focused - so to speak - on trying to locate, observe and photograph these amazing creatures on the eve of their delisting from Federal protection.  For me, grizzlies are the ultimate symbol of wilderness and wild places.  And this image represents all that I love and value about living in, and exploring the shrinking, yet still wild places of the West.  

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