Idaho Up Close

With her Tamron SP 70-200mm VC G2 telephoto lens, Connie Gill-Straubhaar takes pictures of natural wonders that others might overlook.

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By Jenn Gidman
Images by Connie Gill-Straubhaar


Connie Gill-Straubhaar loves to be outdoors, hiking and exploring the scene near her home in Burley, Idaho. But while she enjoys nature, wildlife, and landscape photography in general, taking close-up photos has turned into a passion.

“I appreciate art immensely, and whenever I’m in a new city, I try to visit the local art museums to check out what they’re featuring,” Connie says. “That’s led to me creating artsy, sometimes abstract images that draw on that inspiration. The beauty of close-up pictures like these is that you can be out with friends, all taking photos in the same place, but you’ll all end up with different images. I strive to capture pictures of the things that others might overlook.”

To create her images, Connie taps into her Tamron SP 70-200mm F/2.8 VC G2 telephoto zoom lens. “The versatility of this lens is perfect for what I do,” she says. “I have this lens on my camera at all times. It’s in my car ready to go, whether I’m headed out on a road trip or simply making a grocery run—I never know what I might see. We have moose, elk, deer, and antelope all around my home, so I’m always on the lookout. I know I’ll be ready with a fast lens like the 70-200 on my camera.”

Even when Connie is puttering around the house and yard, the 70-200 comes in handy. “In the heat of the summer, when it’s a 90-degree dry heat and no one wants to go anywhere, I’ll sit on my patio in the evenings with my camera,” she says. “I have the focal lengths I need right at my fingertips, whether I want to capture a wide scene of the mountains in back or do my close-ups of the flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds in the yard. The maximum F/2.8 aperture allows me to shoot in low light, and the Vibration Compensation (VC) adjusts for the small movements I make so that my images stay sharp. There are a few cats hanging around the house that are constantly bumping into me while I’m taking photos, so that ends up being more useful than you’d think.”

Read on to see how Connie has used her 70-200 to document what she calls the “little landscapes” around her.


70-200mm (200mm), F/4, 1/1000 sec., ISO 400
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Dandelions are the scourge of my husband’s existence, but I love taking pictures of them. I got down on my belly for this photo and shot with a fairly large aperture so that the background would almost completely blur out. I usually shoot at higher shutter speeds when I’m taking pictures of flowers like this, because it can be very windy here in Idaho, but sometimes a bit of motion blur works out really well for the image, too.


70-200mm (200mm), F/8, 1/250 sec., ISO 400
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I photographed this lichen in the Owyhee Desert, which stretches through Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon. It’s one of my favorite places to head to when I want to take pictures. I was on a hike with other photographers in the early spring when I spotted this lichen on a piece of volcanic rock.

I tried to isolate the portions that were a little closer, so that the center would be sharp and the colors along the sides would blur out nicely. Those colors are exactly how they appeared in real life—they were gorgeous. I’d never seen lichen quite like that before. I suspect if I’d gone out a week earlier or later, the lichen would probably have been brown, like it usually is. I just had lucky timing on this one.


70-200mm (200mm), F11, 1/250 sec., ISO 400
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This spiderweb was around the corner of the same rock as the lichen in the previous photo. Something had broken through the web—maybe birds or some other creature going after the spiders—so all that was left of it was just these strings. It had recently rained, so the rain droplets were all caught up in the spiderweb, which turned what may have been a nothing image into something so eye-catching. If you magnify some of those droplets, you can see the flowers reflected in them, which is a testament to the sharpness of the 70-200.


70-200mm (70mm), F/5.6, 1/30 sec., ISO 100
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My husband helps out on a dry farm about a mile from our house, where they’d recently harvested the field of wheat. I headed out to the end of the field to see if I could take some photos of what was left. The dry farm is up against a mountain, so I wanted to get that in the background. Shooting the picture at F/5.6 allowed me to blur out just enough of the background so that the wheat stands out in the photo, yet the viewer is still able to get a sense of the environment.


70-200mm (200mm), F/8, 1/60 sec., ISO 100
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I was at a workshop with a friend, in a forest near Yellowstone National Park, and the instructor directed everyone to go exploring and seek out macro or close-up photo opportunities. I was wandering around, taking pictures of pine cones, when I suddenly looked up at this tree and spotted this carpenter ant in the pitch, or tree resin. He was either snacking on the resin or stuck in it—either way, it gave me plenty of time to take all the pictures I wanted. The color of the sun was just right, and the ant was just right, and I ended up with about 50 or 60 pictures of this little guy.


70-200mm (70mm), F/22, 1/8 sec., ISO 100
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This was an “intentional movement” type of shot. I was up on the mountain taking pictures right around the time the trees were starting to change color in the fall. In addition to the green leaves that were still holding on, other leaves were turning orange and yellow, and the bark on the quaking aspens was white. I thought to myself, “Let’s see if I can capture all of that in one image.” I played around for quite a while, zooming in and out with the 70-200 and moving my lens up and down. When I edited this photo later, it spoke to me—I knew I wanted to print it and put it up on my wall.

To see more of Connie Gill-Straubhaar’s work, check out her website and her Instagram.

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