Photographing 100 species in 100 days

I’ve done a host of different photographic projects in Glacier National Park and the Crown of the Continent over the course of my 18-year career at the Hungry Horse News. In 2009 I photographed Glacier for 100 straight days for the Park’s centennial year in 2010. In 2010 I did a 100-mile hike through the Park for its centennial (where I got to watch a black bear swim by a big bull moose in Kootenai Lakes, which was definitely a very fun thing to watch. When a bull moose locks eyes with a black bear, let’s just say it’s an interesting moment. But I digress...) and in 2014 I retraced a big chunk of Bob Marshall’s original hike through what is now the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

So the other day I was talking to Whitefish Pilot editor Matt Baldwin and he suggested I try to photograph 100 different species in Glacier over the span of 100 days for the National Park Service centennial, which is this year.

I had originally planned on something else, but this sounded like a cool project, so I started on it this weekend with a trip into Glacier’s Belly River region. My son and I were the first people to camp back there this spring.

The Belly didn’t disappoint. I bet if a photographer really tried hard, they could photograph 100 different species in a few days in the Belly River. It’s rich with flora and fauna.

On our trip we had some memorable sightings. There was a big black bear with a bum front leg, limping through a meadow; we saw whitetail deer stomping and huffing at a red fox hunting voles in another meadow and we saw a pair of sandhill cranes, which are not common in Glacier.

It was, to put it mildly, a good start to what I hope will be a fun project. We’ll run as many of the photos as we can over the next few months in Hungry Horse News and we may put it together into a glossy publication when all is said and done. Until then, enjoy!