JHP Newsletter - 2018, 12 April
Greetings from southern New Mexico.
Travel: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA
I spent eleven days in Yellowstone National Park in late January for some winter photography. Conditions were pretty good with temperatures mostly just below freezing, and I also got some fresh snow.
These four Bison (Bison bison) were part of a long line moving from one grazing area to another (below left). A group of Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis) rams were out frequently in one area, and one day they were in a decent place to photograph them which is where I made this image of one resting (below right).
1/500 sec, f8, ISO 200
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 640
I saw and photographed many more Coyote (Canis latrans) on this visit than ever before. One was very relaxed and posed atop a boulder (below left). I had a nice time with four coyotes at a bull elk carcass, and I believe it was two adults and their young. In this image below right, the adults are looking intently to make sure that they won't have visitors.
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 320
1/500 sec, f8, ISO 1250
I arrived on Friday the 19th, the last day before the government shutdown. I went out the next morning and everything seemed to be just like normal, which is what I expected because the road from Gardiner through Mammoth to Cooke City is open year-round, and that's the only access to Cooke City in the winter. Things started changing on Sunday the 21st when the tag board at Mammoth Campground was covered with a sheet of metal. I was worried that I'd be kicked out, but there was no indication that the campground was closed. Later that day, a ranger knocked on the door of my RV and gave me my money back that I put in the self-service drop box on Friday — never had that happen before. The "bad news" is that the government reopened on Monday the 22nd, and they started accepting (demanding?) payments for the campground again on the 23rd.
James Hager 3.0
I had planned to stay in Yellowstone longer and then go to Grand Teton National Park, but an interesting thing happened on my way to Yellowstone. I was driving down the road in the RV and started to feel a vibration that reminded me of what happened shortly after I got the rebuilt engine installed. Eventually, it started to feel like a possible flat, so I pulled over and checked all of the tires and they looked fine — hmmm. I got to the campground in Yellowstone and noticed that three of the lug nuts, and their threaded studs, were missing on my left rear dually (below left)! The four lug nuts that were all on the same side of the wheel were loose enough that I could turn them a few times by hand! I got out the tire iron and tightened them all down and pulled the outer dually back towards the inner dually and the wheel hub. Then I pulled the RV forward a bit, tightened the lugs some more, pulled forward some more, etc, and eventually got the wheels back where they were supposed to be.
In the middle of my stay, I took the RV to a small shop just outside the park to get the lugs replaced, but they had ordered lugs for a Ford F450 and not an E450. They reinstalled my old lugs such that there was only a single gap between the remaining lugs, and I could see the nasty wear that the loose nuts had caused as the threads acted like a file while the wheels wobbled and created some nice egg-shaped holes (above right). I took the RV back to them on my last day in the park and they were able to replace the lugs.
This exciting event was eerily similar to my financial situation. There's a saying that goes, "The easiest way to be worth a million bucks as a nature photographer is to start with two million." When I left the corporate world (James Hager 1.0) and started my photography business (James Hager 2.0), I had a comfortable net worth. For the last few years I've been carrying an ever-increasing credit card debt. I always expected to pay it off one day, but instead of receiving more income, I've had had unexpected large expenses that have increased my debt: replacing stolen camera gear in December 2015, replacing the engine in my RV in November 2016, and having a valve job on my Jeep in December 2017. While I was in Yellowstone, a check I was expecting was delayed, and I had to take out a short-term emergency loan from Jan to cover a minimum payment on a credit card to keep my financial wheels from falling off.
I had been thinking about shutting down my photography business for a while and would have done it when my gear was stolen except that I had clients for upcoming safaris — the one part of the photography business that made the most sense in terms of image sales and personal fulfillment. Plus, I wasn't ready to pull the plug on my identity and dream. (OK, the dream had turned into a nightmare, but it was still a dream.) However, after failing to generate significant income by developing and marketing iOS apps by myself, I felt I had no choice but to liquidate some assets in order to reduce my debt. I started to sell off all of my photography gear in February, and that has been a nice income stream as I try to get a better footing for website and iOS/macOS development contracted to other people (that'll pay!). I'll continue to live in my RV and work remotely. I'll mostly just follow Jan around the western US for now, and this will be the last Newsletter.
If you know of anyone who could use a great website developer or iOS/macOS developer, please let me know. My website development is featured at AvantiWebHouse.com and my iOS/macOS development is featured at AvantiApplications.com. My resume is on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/james-onslow-hager.
Take care and happy shooting.
— James
James Hager Photography :: www.jameshagerphoto.com
