Yellowstone National Park: from the Travel Photo Guides iPhone App

Related: What are the most popular tours in Yellowstone National Park? parks, where animals will be found, excellent side trips and photo It really is like having a personal travel guide in your car -- just one . we used a combo of the Yellowstone Treasures book, and the free iphone app from Chimani.
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The coyotes in Yellowstone during the winter are some of the most fascinating animals to watch. With their gorgeous full winter coats, they look stunning against the bright white snowy landscape. Coyotes feed themselves in the winter by mousing. They sneakily walk around the snow and listen for the tiny squeaking noise from a mouse. When they hear it, their whole body stiffens up and they suddenly spring into the air and dive head-first into the snow to grab the mouse.

If you spend a little time during your trip watching for the coyotes, you're sure to get a shot of this.

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Foxes are abundant in Yellowstone, but far more skittish than the coyotes. Whenever I spot a fox in Yellowstone, it's only a brief encounter as it starts running away. But if you look carefully you're likely to see about one fox each day. When you see it, jump out of the car quick and shoot because it won't stick around for long! Bison and Elk are undoubtedly the most commonly-seen animals in Yellowstone. You're certain to see in a day.

Unfortunately, the fact that these animals are so common often makes photographers turn up their noses at the bison and turn their attention to the more rare animals. As far as I'm concerned, that's a mistake. In the winter, the bison are arguably the most beautiful animals in Yellowstone with the bright white snow contrasting against the deep, dark hair on their heads. So the snow gets all over their heads and it makes for a gorgeous shot. Just remember to have a respect for both the elk and bison in Yellowstone. Bison may look like glorified cows, but they are the most dangerous animals in the park if you get too close.

Bighorn sheep fighting with an atomic head butt — Photo by the author: Bighorn sheep are abundant in the park, but they always travel in small herds so you won't run into them constantly. That said, you'll surely see a couple small groups each day. Winter is an excellent time to see the bighorn sheep fighting, but it's something that takes patience. The sheep will sit around doing nothing for an hour or two, and then all of the sudden you'll see a ram run over to one of the ewes. The other rams won't like the ram stealing their woman, so they'll go fight. Sometimes the head locking can go for 30 seconds or a minute, and sometimes it will just be a fleeting second where they lock horns.

Reader recommendation: Gypsy Guide to Yellowstone app

In Yellowstone during the winter, getting the fighting shot takes patience. Just don't let down your guard or you'll miss the action. If you really want the ultimate shot of bighorn sheep, I recommend spending 10 or 15 minutes with a couple herds your first day. See which herds are more active. Then go back the second day at the same place and time they'll likely be in the same area and wait for the ultimate shot.

Bighorn sheep are not skittish at all. You can park your car quite close to them and shoot comfortably without them worrying about you. It's easy to get a nice tight face shot, but I recommend waiting until it does something more interesting than just staring at the camera. Photographing the wolves in Yellowstone is pretty tough. You're certain to see wolves, but they are usually much too far away to get a shot off. Most of the photos of wolves in Yellowstone are shot through spotting scopes with cell phones mounted to the eyepiece to get a snapshot.

You'd be incredibly lucky to see a wolf close enough to fill the frame with even the longest of supertelephoto lenses. The easiest way to see the wolves is to drive along the road until you see cars pulled off the side that have long radio antennas on their vehicles. These are the biologists who follow the wolves' every move and use the radio antennas to locate their radio collars.

Go see the wolves at least once during your trip, but if you want great photos, don't spend all your time trying to get close to a wolf. It's unlikely to happen and you could spend your whole trip chasing them without luck. Bobcat are sometimes seen in the park, but they are much much harder to spot if you don't know where one is hanging out.

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Weasels are pretty common in the park but their white fur against the white snow makes them very hard to spot. They have wolves and bears that you can photograph up close, and unlike zoos, the park lends itself well to photos by placing the animals in natural-looking environments.

Photographer’s Guide to Yellowstone in Winter

Some people don't like shooting animals in captivity, but I don't mind one bit. It's just important to be honest and not tell lies about how a photo was taken. One cool thing about this spot is that, according to the person I talked to, they allow professional photography in the park. You can bring in a big lens without issue, and the lady told me that they don't even mind commercial use of the photos, but I'd check on that one.

I asked if there was a special fee for photographers there usually is and she said they don't do anything like that and the manager confirmed. I'd check again on that, but that's what they told me when I went. I've sent dozens and dozens of photographers there because they don't charge extra and let you use the long lenses. It completely depends on the year. Usually, you'll find temperatures in January at a high of 20 degrees farenheit, but many times the temperature never reaches 0 degrees.

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The factor that controls the experience most is the wind. It doesn't take a very cold temperature to make it miserable if there is a strong wind.


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One year I was in Yellowstone in January and there was almost no snow at all. Other years I can barely stand outside the car for a full minute without feeling the pain of cold. Be ready for anything and check the weather right before you go. Don't forget the more common animals as well! I always stay in the Best Western in Gardiner because they have a nice big free breakfast in the restaurant next to the hotel each morning.

It's big enough that I can skip lunch while shooting in the park, which ends up saving quite a bit of money. Can someone reckmmend an app or audio tour to download for a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton?

GyPSy Guide

Phone and internet service is rare except near the lodges. The chimani park apps have lots of info, and don't require internet. However, we got the most information from the park websites and park newspapers, which can be downloaded as an iBook. No one has mentioned Gaper in a really long time and I don't think anyone every came back with a report on it.

If you do rent the guide would you let us know how it worked? Yellowstone Treasures guide book by Janet Chappel has a mile by mile road log which is very interesting.


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However, this works better if you have traveling companions who can keep track of where you are in the book and read aloud. It is difficult to do traveling solo. Trust me on this, lol. Gaper Guide is worth it! We just returned from a trip to both parks. Instead of having our heads in a book or in a map, we were all able to enjoy the trip and get information. Before going, most of the reviews I read were by older retired?

Our entire family parents and preteens enjoyed it and agreed the trip would not have been as good without it. GG tells you about the history of the parks, where animals will be found, excellent side trips and photo points, and which pullouts have bathrooms can be important, depending on how long that bison-jam is!

It is incredibly easy to use, and you can hit a button to skip a part i. I had done a lot of reading before going, but still would have had to look up information peak names, trail heads, geyser info. It really is like having a personal travel guide in your car -- just one you can turn off if you want to. Based on reading the reviews here on TA, I would say the value of Gaper Guide will depend on whether you are a person who likes to research a destination in advance and look at the maps and then spend time exploring the places that interest you on your own or someone who prefers a guided tour but doesn't want to be part of a group on a bus or pay for a private guide.

There are tremendous online and print resources for those who want to learn about the park before they arrive. As I have stated on here many times, the NPS web site has a wealth of information for planning a visit in advance. While I rarely recommend specific products on TA, Janet Chapple's " Yellowstone Treasures" has been used by many who post on here as their go-to guidebook for Yellowstone. Another recent book for those who really want to know the story behind the various turnoffs and odd buildings seen along the way is Thomas Bohannan's "Yellowstone Mileposts" book. I don't recommend it for the first time or casual visitor but for those who want a detailed road guide with odometer readings and GPS coordinates, this is the ultimate resource.

The second half of the book tells about the history of the buildings in the tourist villages around the park. Yellowstone Treasures has an e-book version. The road guide section of Yellowstone Mileposts is supposed to come out in e-book format at some point in the future. Both of the books mentioned above have their own web sites just do a search on the name with samples from the content available for you to peruse to see if they are worth purchasing for your trip.

While I will be traveling solo in the park in September, I have made mileage log Post-it notes and entered some coordinates into my GPS for each segment of the Grand Loop Road that I will be traveling so I can stop to see some things that I've missed on my previous visits to the park. That way I won't be distracted by an open book on the passenger seat while I'm driving and run into a bison or other critter on the road.

Is there any one guide book that's good and covers Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier? Despite all my research and owning a couple of Yellowstone books inc. Yellowstone Treasures , I have gone ahead and booked a Gaper Guide. I will reserve judgment until I have actually used the device, but so far the email correspondence I have recieved has been excellent.


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    7. I will definitely come back and report on how we found it. In the end I was swayed by my want to not have my head buried in a book for the whole trip. I could read the guide books multiple times, but I think it's really challenging to burn this information to memory without the first hand experiences to attach the information to.

    Any good apps or audio tours for Yellowstone and Grand Teton - Yellowstone National Park Forum

    Most of the facts and figures I have read, I have already forgotten. I'm hoping the Gaper Guide means that I will be able to relax, look up, and not feel the pressure to be a tour guide to my travelling party of 4. No audio portion, but we were content with the "auto touring" part of the Chimani app, which provides written highlights of each road segment for example, Grand Loop from Madison to Mammoth.

    Disclaimer - Most of my professional life was spent as a librarian, so if i see extremely anal in my love of information it is because I am afraid the phone will ring and someone will ask me something , so ,,,. I have cassettes going back thirty years for places like the Natchez Trace and Appomattox, so I appreciate this kind of data.