Great shots, excellent compositions. Wild horses are known as some of the hardiest of animals.

Superb image neighbor.

Superb images. Congratulations!

No, I think that one is in Montana’s Pryor Mountains herd. That's on my bucket list, just haven't made it over there quite yet.

Pilot Butte Wild Horse area on the plateau above Green River and Rock Springs Wyoming. Remote, dry barren landscape with extreme weather conditions. I-80 just happens to go right by there.

I've had the opportunity to visit and photograph 3 different wild horse areas on numerous occasions each. This Pilot Butte herd is pretty tame from what I've experienced. They mostly ignore you when you're in an auto and will ignore you when on foot or just angle away from you (the norm).

The South Steens herd (aka the Hollywood herd because of their mixed colors and approachability) in Oregon are even more approachable, however they seem to battle each other a lot and most have many scars. I've seen full on horse fights at both herds. The much more elusive Kiger Mustang herd (genetically the closest group of wild horses to the original horses brought to America by the Spanish) in the north Steens area of Oregon are extremely skittish. Once they see you in your auto they are gone in a moment.

Thanks everyone for looking and for your nice comments!

Monte

When passing through southwestern Wyoming, I always try to hop up on the wild horse plateau to look for and photograph some of the horses, especially if conditions are right. My prior trip through in early spring, I encountered a heavy snowstorm and didn't take the chance. This time as I was getting near, the sky either had puffy white clouds with blue sky, or a localized rain shower, or dark gray thunderstorm skies.

It was about 6:30pm when I arrived, so I hurried up onto the plateau above Rock Springs. It took a while to locate any of the horses as none were in sight from the main road. A short trip down a 4WD side path took me over a ridge where I found a small herd of 5 mares and a stallion.

They were grazing machines and kept their heads down to the ground most of the time, paying little attention to me as I tried to stay up with them. I stayed with them about an hour and half and had them all to myself.

"Coming at me!" This was when I first found the horses. Photo taken hanging out the truck window.

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Stallion grazing along the ridgeline

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Looks like a painting out of a western novel

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The herd trotting along as I follow on the road

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Sunset light on the horses

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The stallion moving through the sagebrush

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Mike, great images. Your bee photography journey is going well. I am normally using my Canon 100-500mm lens for bees. It is a close-focusing telephoto lens, and I sometimes add an extension tube or two to get even closer. Yes, I use a tripod whenever possible to support the weight and still allow easy movement. With bees, I'm often just standing there waiting on the bee to come and go. I'm pretty new to bee photography also and am learning each time.

This was a hand-held opportune shot with that lens just a couple days ago taken when there was this lone spiky weed/flower at a pullout on the way home from a trip.

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Great shots Mike. Love the panos.

Monte

Enjoyable set. You lucky people!!!

I have my power saving settings set to the following and the viewfinder will not shut off (with caveat below).
Screen dimmer = 20 sec.
Screen off = disable
Auto power off 30 sec.
Viewfinder off = disable

However, if you take your eye away from the viewfinder, it will shut off, but will automatically come back on once it senses your eye again.

Very nice, thanks for posting. I'll be visiting there in a couple weeks. Looking forward to spending a week in the area. East River was already on my hit list.

Beth, great series and excellent sharp photos. That's got to be the happiest looking badgers. The ones I've been lucky enough to get close to and photograph always have a serious and mean looking expression. I spotted one in the National Elk Refuge last year and was photographing it, then I hear a bloodcurdling scream nearby and see bodies flying through the air turning flips. I moved closer and it's two young sibling badgers fighting. One leaves and the other sits there and gives me a "I'm about to come over there and whip your #$%" look.

I have both the R7 and R5 bodies and love them both. The R5 is always my "go to" camera for most situations, however the R7 is used for wildlife where I need the reach and occasionally the faster frame rate. I've been happy with images from the R7.

I find the R7 autofocus to be a little quirky at times compared to the R5. The R7 has newer autofocus "improvement" technology, so maybe my brain just hasn't grasped it fully yet. One customization I recently implemented that really helps me was to set dual back button focus buttons, one with spot focus one-shot, and another button with animal eye recognition and servo. Now I can switch modes as fast as my thumb can slide left or right an inch without moving my eye from the EVF.

From my experience, reading the manual will teach you about 20% of the capabilities. Reading specific topic articles and watching YouTube videos will greatly expand your knowledge of what the camera can do. There are layers and sub-menus within the menu system that you may not even notice at first, and certainly won't understand without some detail explanation that is not included in the manual. Follow the breadcrumbs. Learning one thing will lead to something else, and so on.