If you were to ask me what my favorite time of the year to photograph Yellowstone is, my usual answer is early spring for bears and baby animals. Not far behind that would be the fall elk rut, the peak of their annual mating season. Elk are the most abundant large mammal in Yellowstone, and probably one of the most photographed animal in the park with their impressive antlers.

In the greater Yellowstone area, elk behavior starts changing by early September in conjunction with the first cooler weather showing up. We usually get to photograph the elk at least once or twice a season in falling snow. The action continues for a month or so, sometimes well into October. Elk keep their antlers until March or April, so they can still be great subjects throughout the rest of fall and winter. Most elk migrate outside the park to lower elevations in the winter, but a few thousand remain year round. Even more are just north of the Gardiner entrance.

Any other time of the year, you don’t see elk doing much besides laying down or eating. In the rut however, that resting and eating is often interrupted by intense bouts of loud bugling, chasing, and sometimes fighting.

Bulls (male elk) will work tirelessly to corral as many females as he can into a harem, while keeping any other possible rivals at bay. Morning and evening are great times to watch this, but it really can happen any time of the day. Late September is best because the cooler daytime temperatures keep elk active longer.

Visitors have to be extremely careful because those big bulls will get rid of anything or anyone they perceive as a threat. The video below was one of several incidents from last year where an elk let someone know he was too close. The same thing can happen when cow elk are defending newborn calves in spring and summer.

The town of Mammoth Hot Springs, near the park’s northern range, is a place that where human foot traffic coincides with a core elk habitat. You can’t blame the people, because Mammoth is a working town (the park headquarters). Elk don’t mind walking anywhere in town, and both female and male elk can be dangerous.

Bison are often said to be the most dangerous animal in Yellowstone, but it wouldn’t surprise me if elk weren’t too far behind in number of defensive attacks. Moose are another very dangerous animal during their rut season, which is about the same time as elk. They are just more reclusive and less numerous so you don’t hear of many incidents with moose. Bears are certainly still dangerous but they are much smaller and less likely to encounter humans.

Tips for photographing elk

The color of elk in summer means they blend in very well with their surroundings, so the key to getting an image where they stand out clearly is to watch your background and lighting. As with any subject, you want your camera to be roughly at their eye level, and Mammoth Hot Springs or the Madison River are both great for this. An elk standing on the side of a hill will be close to its background, so everything will be in focus. If you’re at eye level with a distant background, it will blur away and keep only the subject in focus.

Light is also key to having your subject stand out. Brighter antlers and brighter fur on the back stand out well against dark backgrounds, but you have to watch out for the darker color fur around the head.

The antlers stand out in the above photo, but the dark fur on the head blends into the background. You can experiment with moving the “horizon” line up and down to find a good balance and get a good separation of contrast.

A little bit of side light helps outline the two elk above, contrasting against the darker water. Completely flat light is nice and soft, but it can also lead to everything being a middle “gray” if everything is just a different shade of brown.

Something I like to experiment with when possible is using lens flare to add artistic elements to a photo. The light in the flare can reduce contrast significantly, so you’ll want to move the camera around to try different placements and intensities. The shapes in a lens flare can change from one lens to another, so you may not see something filling the frame like this. A 400mm f/2.8 lens has a big front element, so I suspect that influenced the size here.

You can also look for natural elements like grass or leaves to blur in the foreground, which helps create a unique fall color palette around your subject.

Want to photograph elk and fall color in Yellowstone? Join me for a workshop this fall.

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