Battling Bison

Battling Bison

One mid-afternoon day in Yellowstone we came upon a pair of bison charging at each other. We pulled up right at the end of their fight so only saw a few head-butts (and I was only able to quickly snap off this one shot), but it was still exciting to watch. Male bison stomp to create a dust cloud then smash their heads together to establish rank and for mating rights. In this photo you can see a large dust cloud to the left of them and another in between them.

As I said, I took this in mid-day light, and it shows: the light is very harsh. I tried pushing this down into a silhouette, which is a neat effect, however the dust cloud faded away then, which I think is an interesting part of the shot — or at least, it’s a neat part to my memory of driving over the hill and seeing the bison charging each other!

See the original on Flickr.