I’ve been settling into my new surroundings quite nicely here in Bozeman. I’ve been surprised how quickly I’ve adapted into this new mountain lifestyle. After my first full week at my new staff photographer job at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, I decided to take up an offer from a new friend to cross country ski in Yellowstone National Park this past weekend. Not having XC skis of my own, I opted to rent some from the local Chalet Sports in downtown Bozeman and then met up with a new buddy Megan and made the 1 1/2 hour drive south towards Gardiner and the Mammoth Hot Springs for a day out in the mountains. We never made it to the ski trail. Megan had heard from a fellow park ranger that some wolves had been seen in a couple areas of the park recently and that we would have a good chance of seeing them. We decided to check out one of the sights on our way to the trail. Pay dirt. The first spot we saw about 5 wolves laying on a hillside and then stumbled across 10 more at a second location. We ended up scraping the skiing idea and spending the whole day watching the pack through the viewing scopes from the hardcore watchers who were helping out the resident wolf researchers. I have never seen wolves in the wild before. In one day we watched them play, breed, watched how they responded to the alpha males and females, and watched them cross a road in front of us to feast on a fresh buffalo carcass in a field. It was a surreal, fascinating day to watch how these often shy animals think and operate. It was rare treat. Kicking myself for not bringing a larger lenses, I had to settle to photograph them with a 200mm lens. Here are a couple that I liked including a lone bull buffalo cruising along the road. Loving Montana! -M

My mini vacation/moving road trip has come to an end. Tomorrow I start my new job as a staff photojournalist at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle newspaper in Bozeman, Montana. As I was leaving California, I managed to squeeze in one last steelhead fly fishing trip with my buddies Kara, Allison and Ryan for a two day mission to the Eel River and Redwood Creek. As you can tell from the photos, we did a lot of walking this trip. It was slow on the fish catching front but overall we had a great time in the beautiful northern California scenery of giant redwood trees. Here are some of my favorites.

Well the final hours of my last day as a Daily Republic staff photographer have come and gone. I’ve had a great 3 1/2 year run covering the Solano County community here near the San Francisco Bay Area. I did a lot of growth here as a shooter and now I look to the horizon towards my new staff photographer gig at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle working in the mountainous paradise of Bozeman, Montana. Four words: Epic Fly Fishing Country! I’m pretty excited about it. Montana is where I began my journalism career and I’m looking forward to returning to it with lots of experience under my belt and excitement to document the culture that I love so much. I’m already thinking of some great story ideas to tackle out there. Here’s to new beginnings! -Greener

It’s never too cold to fish. Back in December I headed up north for another weekend steelhead mission with my friends Ryan and Rich. I am not a morning person but when there is an opportunity to float on the Rogue River, I somehow find the motivation. Coffee helps. We left Ryan’s house early in the morning for the long drive north into Oregon and met Rich stream side as he was putting the boat in the water. I love how different a river can look and feel in the middle of winter. The color palettes stream side take on pastel hues and there is this cold, beautiful stillness to the landscape. It was a nice change of scenery. In between swinging assassin flies on our spey rods, I took the time to photograph the guys fishing. Being out there in the cold was worth it. After years of steelhead fishing in northern California and Oregon, I finally ended up catching my first adult steelhead. Thanks for looking, -M

Back in November the urge to get out on the water over came me. In the last six years of living living here, I’ve come to really love winter steelhead fishing in northern California. Especially on the swing. I feel fortunate that some of my good friends share the same passion. This trip was my maiden voyage of my sweet new Echo Spey rod. I drove up with my buddy Allison (my partner in crime from my Alaska trip) from Davis and met my Redding friends Kara and Justin to head over to the Trinity River for a weekend of chasing chrome. Had a great time. Here are some of my favorite images from the weekend. Tight lines, -M

Again, special thanks to my sponsors Patagonia, Glacier Glove and Echo Rod Company for all of their assistance and their fantastic gear.

Holy moly! I’m a bit backed up with my blog posts. I’ve been meaning to post this one for a while now.  A couple months back I got an invite from my friend Allison to join her on a trip up to Alaska for a week of fly fishing for the coho salmon run on Kodiak Island. Allison is an aquatic biogeochemistry and community dynamics grad student in the Ecology Department at UC Davis and was headed up to Fairbanks, Alaska for a science conference. She decided to make a vacation out of it by going up early to have a go at the coho salmon. I have been trying to get to Alaska for years and her invite just happened to coincide with a time break in my wedding photography season. I didn’t hesitate for a second and agreed right there to treat myself to a well deserved mini vacation. Neither of us had ever been up to Alaska let alone the mostly remote Kodiak Island so we started doing some research. There are two ways to fish Kodiak Island – either by staying at a remote fancy/expensive fishing lodge or to fish along the road system. We went with the latter and ended up staying with some friends of hers who lived in the town of Kodiak. Our gracious hosts Matt and Mari lent us their old pickup truck for the week – a blessing and a curse where we had to constantly be monitoring the engine temperature due to it’s frequent overheating. They say it isn’t an adventure until something goes wrong. Kodiak is an island about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage with over 3,500 square miles of rugged wild terrain which makes it the second largest island in the United States behind Hawaii. The place is notorious for it’s lousy, rainy weather but is legendary for it’s salmon runs and large brown bears. We spent the week exploring the river systems of the Buskin River, the American, the Pasagshak and Russian Creek in search of coho salmon. It’s harder than it looks. We caught plenty of pink salmon, a few Dolly Vardens and “luckily” Allison hooked into and landed three silver salmon. I suppose it’s hard to catch a silver salmon with a camera in hand. Alas, I was skunked in the coho department. I redeemed myself later in the week when Matt took Allison and I out on his 60 foot boat for two afternoons of deep sea fishing. I’d never done it before and had a great time catching my first Halibut and a copious amount of rock fish. All in all it was an incredible trip. Alaska is too damn big to conquer in a mere week but I must say that I am in love with it. I will definitely be back soon. -M

Special thanks to my sponsors Patagonia, Glacier Glove and Echo Rod Company for all of their assistance and their fantastic gear.

The final hours are counting down for 2011. What a year. For me it was a rebuilding year both professionally and physically. I started out the year with being hit by a car while out on assignment for my newspaper and the result has been an intensive year of doctors visits, pain management and rehabilitation. I’m finally starting to feel better but my recovery is far from over. The car accident was a pretty derailing experience for my year and it has taken me a while to get back on the tracks. My priorities this year have been to heal my body and continue to form the foundation for my future in the business of photography. Right around the time of my accident, I had a series of pretty intense/ego bruising photo edits from some very talented and respected editors in the journalism industry. It’s always good to have that reality check to put you in your place and make you re-evaluate what you are doing with your craft. It forced me to do a lot of soul searching with how I approach my photography and my maneuvering through the rapidly changing journalism industry. It was good for me to hear and I think down the road I will be a stronger photographer for it. I still haven’t quite figured it all out but I can say confidently that I made some progress this past year and that I have high hopes for 2012. I’m looking forward to it. Happy New Year everyone! -M

Man where did the year go? To tell the truth I’m glad to be over with it. It has been a long year of doctor visits and general soreness with my injuries from my Christmas 2010 car accident. I’m looking forward to the new year. Looking back on my work for December I feel like I got enough good photos to end on a high note for the year. I’ve been shooting a lot of “Day in the Life” mini photo stories that are slated to run throughout the holiday weekend. The concept for them is that I follow around a person in the community for a couple hours and try to show what it’s like to live a day in their shoes. It’s been a lot of fun for me. So far I’ve spent time with a cab driver, a preschool teacher, a specialty cake maker and a special needs school bus driver. They have been a nice change from the avalanche of holiday stories that tend to come with the December month. Overall its been an enjoyable month. -M

Yesterday evening I covered a tear jerker of a story for my newspaper. We found out late in the day that a Travis Air Force Base military dad was going to be surprising his 4-year-old daughter and wife by coming home early and show up at the daughter’s dance recital here in downtown Fairfield. His plan was to sneak into her recital and then once she finished, he would walk out from the crowd and go to her on stage. I decided to camp out behind the curtains stage left and then when the moment came, rush out onto the stage to make my frame. It was pretty special to watch the daughter finish dancing then see her eyes grow big and tear up as she yelled out “Daddy!” and ran to hug him. Soon after, wife came up on stage too and there was a great family moment with the crowd applauding. I knew going into it what side of the stage he would likely walk up so I set up a strobe on the overhead balcony shooting down to the steps. I was thinking the moment could happen either on stage or down in the crowd. I compensated by aiming my flash so it would hit both. I got lucky that they were facing away from the audience and towards me. I think it worked out pretty well. I like how I can see the crowd in this image. The first image in this post is from when the daughter stopped her initial hug to look her father in the eyes. I think she was a bit stunned. Rightly so. It ran big on the front page of our paper this morning. You can read the accompanying article here. The local broadcast stations covered it as well. The rest are some other images from the event that I liked. It’s times like this that I feel really lucky to be working as a journalist. It warms the soul to see a young military family like this getting to spend Christmas together. Happy Holidays everyone! -M

Upon my return to work recently after my bout with pneumonia, I was given a fun, but hasty assignment by my photo editor. Often times planned scheduled stories won’t work out for some reason or another which leaves the management to scramble to fill the void. Such a time came a week or two ago, when our planned photo package for our Sunday Living section of the newspaper fell through. My boss turned to me to come up with a filler story. We’ve had an exceptional extended fall here in Northern California and my assignment was to go out and document the fall colors through a photo essay within three days. I must say I really enjoyed doing it. Although it was a rushed story, I took the opportunity to slow down and really study the scenery I was photographing. I was pleased with the results. Crazy to think we are just a couple weeks away until Christmas. These warmer California “winters” are messing with this midwesterner’s head. Is it weird that I want to see everything covered in snow for the holidays? Thanks for looking. -M