Order your 2024 Calendar from Corey McDonald Portrait Artist here.

I’m so excited to launch my first ever calendar featuring scenes both photographic and photographic paintings. I decided to tell you all about each image featured, beginning with January. All of the images selected are very special to me.

January’s image looks pretty cold, right? It was only a little below freezing that morning. I was on my trip with Find Your Focus in Yellowstone with Cris and Deanna Duncan. That morning I was riding with Mr. Stephen Stookey – I can’t remember who else was in the car, so if it was you, please forgive me.

We were on our way to hike the trail to Mystic Falls when we saw the beautiful still water and the snow and the trees. It was too good to pass up. Cris was leading the pack that morning in our four-car caravan so he was the first to stop. We all spent about fifteen minutes there. I captured only a couple of images for landscape purposes. Most of what I was photographing was the snow and elements that I could use in my composite work. Being from Alabama, I had never seen real snow. Our snow is always wet and can kill if you’re having a snowball fight. This was powder.

To top off the amazing aspects of what you’re seeing in this image, with snow, clouds, and water, it was also the end of May.

For February, I chose to bring in a little sunlight for those cold winter months. I was on a trip to speak at the Montana Professional Photographers Association’s annual state event in Livingston in March of 2023. I’ve got to say, they are some of the most hospitable and gracious photographers that I’ve ever met (and I’ve met many wonderful photographers across the country). Their president took me out to explore before the conference got started and we went into Yellowstone – for perspective, the road was covered in snow and we had to drive an hour to get to the park and spent two hours in the park before driving an hour back to Livingston, just so I could photograph snow and a few animals.

It was on the way back out of the park that we stopped to photograph this herd moving from one side of the road to the other. I saw the ridge they were walking on and knew that I would hate myself if I didn’t jump out to get it. One of the bison turned her head to look at me, making it a perfect photograph. I didn’t choose that image for the calendar because I felt it was too special, deciding instead to keep it for just me.

Fast-forward to a few days later when I joined Lisa Asp and Chris Wooley on our own little Yellowstone adventure. We rented a little house in Gardiner, my favorite place to stay in Montana, and ventured out every day for three days. While we didn’t exactly get a ton of wildlife, we were blessed with an overabundance of snow-covered bison, a lone moose, the last elk with his antlers, and many coyotes. This one was walking just off the side of the road in Lamar Valley. We, along with about ten other cars, took our time coming through as this one was obviously on the trail of something and we were all anxious to find out what. It turned and looked right at us. Click-click-click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click- click-click-click-click-click.

When I got home, I loved the image as it was. As an artist, however, I really just wanted to paint it and put a mountain at sunrise. I altered the image using multiple methods, including painting in additional fur to create the sunlight reflecting off its coat. When I was finished, I decided to enter it into the Animal Image Makers 2023 competition and it received a 94 and was a Top 10 finalist in the competition for the Wildlife category. The only thing about the title, “Lamar Valley Sunset,” was that it was sunrise.

Now April…that was a given for which image should go to that month. Of all the images in the 2024 calendar, April’s was the only one not made in the past two years. To tell you that story, we have to travel back in time all the way to 2013.

I had only recently discovered that the Lock and Dam in Claiborne, just up the road from my hometown, was home to several bald eagles that don’t migrate. I think I was traveling there every single day, morning and night, to try and capture one on my rinky-dink lens at the time. On the way there, I came across this ant hill on the side of the road. I had to look twice, because that ant hill was moving! I pulled off the side of the road, knowing what I was seeing, as not one but two little fawns poked their heads up out of the tall grass.

Twin fawns. It was so funny, too. One was calling out frantically, not in distress, but in warning to its sibling. It was like watching two little human siblings: one was a tattle-tell, the other a curious trouble-maker. The fawn in the image was the trouble-maker. It stood up and started walking toward me, hence its siblings calls for, “I’m telling mom!” I backed away hoping that the fawn wouldn’t keep following me, but to my surprise and dismay, it hopped into my driver-side seat because I left the door open. It laid down and looked up at me. I did the only thing I could do to help protect it. I had to pull it out gently so as not to get my hands on it too much. Then it curled up next to my tire. I nudged it with my shoe until it got up and walked a few feet away, then I hurriedly jumped in the car and backed away enough to get out of the way.

I retold this story to a few people afterward and they were upset because I left it there. They said that its mom was probably dead and I should be ashamed. So for those who don’t know, does often leave their fawns alone, usually in tall grass, while she goes off to graze. Fawns have no scent when they’re born and for some time after. This helps them avoid predators, which again is why I didn’t want to get my hands on him too much and for too long when it was in my car. You see, if the doe comes back and smells my scent on her baby, she will abandon it. That’s nature.

May’s is possibly one of my top three favorites. There’s nothing too special about it, artistically speaking. But this was my first grizzly photographed in the wild. It was the 2023 Yellowstone trip with Find Your Focus and we were caught up in a huge traffic jam because of this big guy. I was using the Duncans’ Canon R5 and Bill Porter’s Sigma 500mm f/4, so naturally I had about two-thousand stills of him. I was so excited, I think I may have giggled a little too much for Bill’s liking. The grizzly was trying to get to the other side of the river, so he decided to take a swim. Well, that probably would’ve worked had the current not been so swift. He was basically putting on a comedy show to the two-hundred or so onlookers.

June’s image was another using the Canon R5 and Sigma lens. Unfortunately, it wasn’t captured in the wilds of Yellowstone or Alabama. This eagle is one of the raptors housed at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana. Lets be honest, though, how could I pass up such an amazing pose? I decided to paint this majestic creature that night on my laptop.

Speaking of the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center….

July happens to be the month I hate the most out of the year. Don’t get me wrong, it does host the birthday of the greatest country that ever was or ever will be, not to mention it’s the birth month of everyone’s favorite hero wizard. Being from Alabama, I hate the summer months with a burning passion, with “burning” being the key word, here. So to help alleviate my distaste for the one of the worst months of the year to do anything outside except die, I decided to put my absolute favorite wildlife painting for July to help me cope with it.

This is Bridger, one of the wolves housed at the Discovery Center. He’s my muse. Every visit to the center brings about a new look for this beautiful wolf. I photographed this image in September of 2021 and painted it a few months later. I called it “Wolf of the Hoodoo” in competition at American Society of Photographers (87), Animal Image Makers (96, Top 10 Wildlife), Texas Professional Photographers Association (Unanimous Texcellence), and finally in the International Photographic Competition, where it was given Imaging Excellence as part of my Diamond Case in 2022. Bridger is also featured in several other art pieces throughout my storytelling artwork and my wildlife work.

If July is awful, August is worse. It was a hundred and fourteen degrees at one point with eighty-percent humidity. No, thanks. This is why I chose my second-favorite image for this particular month. Once again on a trip with Find Your Focus, this was an early morning start. We were headed somewhere to do something – I can’t remember – but we all stopped to photograph this glorious landscape. Looking closely, you can see the elk butts in the hills. The bear may or may not have been there in real life.

But then there’s September. Only a bit of relief here in Alabama; but such a majestic and powerful month in the mountains of the west. With the leaves and grass turning golden and all the wildlife in booty-call-mode, it’s the perfect time to head west. It’s even better for water. This was part of the view of Mystic Falls. The waterfall itself was behind me in this image, but it was too beautiful to pass up not to photograph downstream. Steam rising from the hot springs, water rolling through, golden grass and vivid evergreens mingling with the sunrise. I’ll never forget that day because it was the day that I decided to get more in shape. This image was a perfect way to sum up September (for the moment), as it was also photographed in September.

October was a fairly easy choice. I photographed this heron at the Lock and Dam, capturing something with my new Nikon Z8 that I’d always wanted. This action came a bit too early for me to be happy, though. You see, this heron had been posing for me for about a half and hour, after I gained its trust during the previous two hours of observing it. I was clearly visible to the heron as well as to any person that was in the vicinity. There were only two other people. One was fishing from a platform over the dam. The other was with him but decided to take a stroll down to the bank of the river. He then walked the bank around over the course of about twenty minutes before finally getting to the pool of water this heron was standing in, watching warily. Just when I thought the guy was going to back away, since I was literally right there with a large lens photographing this bird in the perfect light, the guy picks up a rock and throws it at the heron, which of course flew away. The guy then walks back up to the platform after I waved my arms in anger and said, “Are you freaking kidding me, dude?” People, don’t be a douchebag.

Ah, November. I was once again on a trip to speak at a state convention in November of 2022. It was with the Professional Photographers of Colorado. After the conference (during which it snowed, by the way), I was handed off to several amazing people for adventures in that beautiful state. To start, David Snyder invited me over to his house so I wouldn’t have to get a hotel and he and his wife took me out to watch a wonderful children’s choir sing. I also got a grand tour of Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Pike’s Peak, and a few other places. It was amazing. Then Michael Ryno took me to Rocky Mountain National Park, my first and only visit (so far), to try and find moose. No luck, but we did get some great landscapes and I got to see the hotel that The Shining was based on. Finally, I was handed off to the Bumgardners, who took me through Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

I’m not too familiar with the story of the Arsenal but I do know that it is now home to a bison herd and several thousand prairie dogs. There’s also some huge mule and whitetail deer. I finally got images of deer that I’ve always wanted, images that have always eluded me here at home. This one was on the scent of a doe – he was feeling frisky.

Finally we come to December, my favorite month of the year. By December, all color is completely gone. For south Alabama, fall comes and goes in a single day. To illustrate what I mean here, follow along. Let’s say there are ten trees in a row in a field in south Alabama. One day, let’s say in October, all the trees are green and vibrant. The next day, two of the trees are bare, three trees have lost most of their leaves, and the other five are still vibrant and full of green color. The next day, only one tree has leaves, mostly green, until a gust of wind comes along and now all the leaves are on the ground. It’s very rare that we get fall color here. The only thing that I find comfort in this time of the year in south Alabama is Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year – and now that song is in your head. You’re welcome.

December is supposed to be cold and wonderful; for Alabama, it’s just the last month of the year for short sleeves and shorts with flip-flops. For our northern friends and those out west, on the other hand, it’s pretty dang cold. While I did photograph this bison on the same trip mentioned earlier with Lisa and Chris in March of 2023, I can’t help but throw this big guy into the December mix. Snow-covered and in stark contrast to the snow and mountains, it just feels like a December image to me.

So those are the stories behind the calendar. I hope they gave you some insight into their meanings and how special it is to share them with you all.

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