Theodore Roosevelt National Park
“I have always said I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota.”
I'll be honest: North Dakota had never featured highly on my travel bucket list. But, I have an ambition to visit every national park in the US, and that occasionally means heading to states I might not have otherwise considered. This summer, Theodore Roosevelt National Park was the motivation to go.
Theodore Roosevelt continually appears on lists of underrated and uncrowded parks. And with lots of accessible wildlife, it held some of Yellowstone’s allure without the traffic. And it was genuinely different from anywhere I'd been before. That combination was enough for me to book the flights and pack my camera.
For this trip, I was hoping to photograph three species in particular: plains bison, black-tailed prairie dogs, and feral horses. And I set myself a challenge; my hope was to come away with four distinct image types: a portrait, a detail shot, a behavioral moment, and something environmental. The goal was to think differently in the field, to get out of my comfort zone, and to make the most of my limited time there. And man, did the park deliver.
Some species are hard to photograph simply because they’re hard to find. On this trip, black-tailed prairie dogs were hard to avoid. They were everywhere. Their towns spread across the grasslands in all directions, with hundreds of animals and burrow entrances.
Their sprawling communities were full of activity and noise. And as a photographer, the real problem was knowing where to start. I’d pick one animal doing something interesting, only for it to pause or turn the other way while three more caught my attention just out of frame.
For portraits, I generally like to be at eye level with my subject, so for prairie dogs that means getting as low as possible, sometimes lying on dry, prickly grass. I found a couple perched on a burrow mound, kept my distance with a long lens, and waited for the right moment. Locking focus on the eye was fairly straightforward, and with a shallow depth of field, the flat expanse behind blurred into a smooth backdrop.
Environmental shots forced me to work against my instincts. When you have the ability to zoom in on a subject this endearing, the temptation is to keep a tight crop. Pulling back to place these small figures in wider context was a slightly different challenge. I couldn’t rely on the background dissolving into a formless wash of color, and that meant being more intentional with the whole frame.
Detail shots were genuinely difficult. Even with a 500mm lens, it was hard to pick out details from a respectful distance. The only option was to stay still and hope one moved closer to me, but waiting isn’t much of an option when you’re traveling with another little critter who doesn’t find patience a virtue. Still, I was drawn to their long, curved nails, and got one image I was pleased with. But I'll be honest: this owed more to tight cropping in post than to any technique in the field.
For behavior, I was partly working against a problem I couldn't solve. A significant portion of a prairie dog's life happens underground. And when they’re above ground, they can be fast and unpredictable. The behavior I settled on was one vocalizing at sunset. I learned that their calls are more sophisticated than you think. It’s hard to appreciate in a still image, but research on prairie dogs suggests their calls are like descriptive language, full of detailed information.
That knowledge doesn't necessarily change the image, but it changes how I see it. As a bonus, I was able to photograph a horned lark sharing their ecosystem and picking through the grass nearby.
Bison occupy a place in the American psyche like no other animal; integral to human life on this continent for thousands of years, then hunted to the edge of extinction within a generation. By the time the park was established, there were no bison here, but in the 1950s, a small herd was transferred from Nebraska, so I felt fortunate to see them living wild. They were a surprisingly challenging subject to photograph, though.
Anyone who has driven through Theodore Roosevelt will know the bison jam. You round a bend, and suddenly the road belongs to the herd. Photography from the car window becomes an option. In those moments, I turned my lens to the details. The obvious choice was the eye: large and expressive. But finding focus amongst that dense fur wasn’t always easy. My favorite detail shot, however, was one of the nose and beard.
Behavior was trickier. The bison rut typically peaks around the time of our trip, but the heat complicated things. I couldn't imagine being wrapped in that thick fur coat when it’s 100 degrees. The most compelling behavioral moment came in the North Unit, where a herd in the middle distance began to wallow collectively, rolling in the dirt and kicking up plumes of dust. It was hard to pick out individuals from that far away, but the dark shapes emerging and fading back into the haze made for some interesting shots.
For portraits, the opportunity I'd been waiting for arrived during golden hour: a solitary bull grazing against an open stretch of badlands. Close to ideal conditions. And yet, bison present a strange contradiction. They appear docile and slow, heads down, grazing at a pace that feels almost glacial. Then, without obvious warning, they can move with surprising speed. They seem entirely indifferent to your presence until the moment they’re not. I was constantly reframing, repositioning to keep the light on the right side of the animal, and reminding myself not to step backward onto a cactus or a rattlesnake. Maintaining a safe distance from a large wild animal while navigating terrain you can't look at is its own particular challenge. It was, in the best possible way, a fun problem to have.
The environmental shot came as the sun dropped toward the horizon: a herd moving along a ridgeline, their silhouettes darkening against the last of the light. When one straggler drifted into the frame and completed the composition almost by accident, I had it. The hard part came later: processing that much tonal range without losing detail in either the shadows or the sky.
Seeing horses living wild was, to reach for the obvious word, wild. It's hard to explain exactly why it hits differently, but there's something that shifts when you encounter an animal you've only ever seen domesticated living on its own terms. It's worth pausing on the word wild, though, because it's complicated. The horses of Theodore Roosevelt National Park are feral. Descended from domesticated animals, but living free here for generations.
We first spotted a group standing on the prairie above the road. I didn't witness any dramatic displays of behavior. What I saw was quieter. A loose gathering, some of them close enough to be touching, others fanned out at the edges, keeping watch in different directions, sometimes with one resting its head on the back of another. I looked into this afterward and learned that it's a form of social bonding. Resting a head on another horse's back signals trust. A horse won't make itself even slightly vulnerable that way unless it feels genuinely safe.
Portrait shots were achievable but not simple. Isolating a single horse within a loose, shifting herd sounds straightforward, but there's always a tail, a haunch, or a stray ear creeping into the frame. The other challenge was familiar from the bison: heads down, grazing. I spent time waiting for the right moment.
Detail shots were the hardest category. The horses had attractive coats, manes, and tails, but they didn't crowd near traffic the way bison sometimes did, which meant working at a respectful distance and relying heavily on tight cropping in post. Another area for improvement.
The last shot of the trip ended up being my favorite environmental shot. The same herd I'd spotted on day one was far below us now; small figures on a dry riverbed, rolling in the dust and chasing each other, well away from roads and visitors. The light was harsh, but it was a really fun moment to witness.
“There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.”
The Northern Great Plains delivered far more than I’d expected. Shaped by thousands of years of erosion: colorful sedimentary rock layers, buttes, mesas, and ravines carved by the Little Missouri River, create a complex landscape. Under the glare of a searingly hot afternoon, the layers flattened into the relentless distance. But during golden hour, it was stunning.
I came home with images I'm proud of, a long list of things I'd do differently, great memories, and a genuine appreciation for a place I'd almost talked myself out of visiting.
Will I return soon? Probably not. But was it worth the effort? Without question.
