A few weeks ago, I introduced my wife to backpacking in the beautiful Grayson Highlands State Park in southestern Virginia. Part of my reason for picking this location was to see the herd of wild ponies that life at 5000’ on the grassy balds.

I shared some of my best pictures from the trip on Flicker under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). On Saturday, I stumbled acrosss an article about the Grayson Highlands ponies on the Smithsonian Magazine website. I was pleasantly surprised to see they selected two of my images for the story! I’ve been spending more time lately exploring my longtime interest in wildlife photography, and I’m thrilled to see others sharing my work.

You can find more of my photography on photos.tdhopper.com or Instagram.