Due to circumstances beyond my control I am unable to sponsor a seminar in 2015.
Xanterra, the vendor who controls all room reservations in Yellowstone changed their reservation policy the first of this year and I was unaware of that change until today. Room reservation blocks are now available for a full year in advance and all accomodations in the Park are full this June except for the newly remodeled rooms at Lake Hotel, and those rooms run $385 per night plus taxes. This comes to well over $1200 for the three nights of my seminars and that is just not financially feasible in my opinion. I usually sponsor these seminars out of Mammoth for the best central location but rooms there are fully booked until May 2016 as of now.
The pressure of the loss of over 300 cabins at Canyon has driven up the cost of accomodations in the park until the new condos are completed in 2017.
I apologize to everyone wanting to attend my June 2015 seminar but without rooms available the only other option would be a camping seminar, and that would require hard sided campers as the weather is awfully cold for sleeping in tents at that time. I would consider the possibility if there was enough interest, camping can be had for around $35 per night.
Again I apologize for the inconvenience.

This new lens from Sigma is more expensive than their upcoming "Contemporary" model for one BIG reason. It is designed fully weather sealed for the wildlife photographer who doesn't put his gear away when the weather turns bad.
Shot this morning at about 6:50 AM near Pebble Creek in Yellowstone Park. Moderate snowfall since midnite, oh and the current air temp was -16 degrees. The Sigma performed flawlessly! It did want to search just a little bit in the very low light, the sun was not up yet but the scene had a luminescence from the clouds and the snowfall. The snow was probably the reason it hunted, but the issue was not bad at all and to be expected!
(When I test a lens I TEST a lens! LOL)
About 50 minutes outside the truck was all I could handle at that temp. A loud truck drove by and scared the moose away about that time anyhow. I had hoped she would come closer to me but there was no forage between us.
Would I use the Tamron 150-600mm out in these conditions? Well, maybe one time only, its not weather sealed.

I have a six-year-old iMac that has plenty of power and storage left. I also have about 7,000 photos in iPhoto and love its simplicity and quality (I'm a bit of a minimalist). Since upgrading to Mavericks iPhoto does not work as well -- the initial photo is fine but any time I attempt to make even small improvements the image begins to degrade. I upgraded to Yosemite hoping that the problem would be resolved, but it wasn't. Has anyone else had that problem and, if so, did you identify and fix the problem?