Forest Shrouded in Fog, Mt. Tamalpais SP

After a late night of the Photowalk, I woke up before dawn with the hopes of photographing the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands. No luck. It was completely fogged in so much that I couldn’t see the bridge despite standing next to it at the first turnoff in the Marin Headlands.

Since that didn’t work out (and since Muir Woods NM wasn’t open yet), Greg Lato and I ended up going to Mount Tamalpais State Park above the fog layer to shoot landscape photos. Mt. Tam is the best California State Park in my opinion and it is not even close. Not only is the scenery amazing, the weather is about as extreme as it gets here. Down below the fog in Muir Woods, it was 50 degrees meanwhile just a few miles away up along Bolinas Ridge it was pushing 80 degrees by 7:30 a.m.

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Black and White Photo of Seal Rocks, San Francisco, CA at Night

This was the last photo I took during Saturday’s Worldwide Photowalk at the Seal Rocks in San Francisco which was led by Jim Goldstein. It was nearly pitch black outside except for the lights from the Cliff House beaming down from above which illuminated the Seal Rocks and the Pacific Ocean. I decided to go for a “hail mary” type of photo since I couldn’t really see well enough to focus and went for ISO 6400 with a 30 second exposure at f16 while a certain famous landscape photographer was relegated to looking on with his trusty Nikon…

I didn’t take a lot of photos since the weather wasn’t all that good to put it mildly but it was fun catching up with friends and meeting a few new people in the process. I had never attended a photowalk before but this one had about 35 I would guess which was a pretty good number. Of course everyone has their own priorities, of which some photographers seemed purely interested in taking photos for the contest rather than networking or learning but I was mainly there just to hang out since I had been to this location many times in the past.

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Lower Yellowstone Falls in Snow Storm at North Rim, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

A bit more shameless self-promotion: My Vancouver skyline photo was licensed by one of my photo agencies for the opening credits of a Japanese TV show. As always, my photos are available for editorial & commercial image licensing and as fine art photography prints ranging from 12 x 16 to 40 x 60 and mural sizes depending on the use. The quality of digital cameras are so good now that I’ve sold 40 x 60 inch prints and the detail held up very well at that large size.

Vancouver Skyline at Night, British Columbia, Canada

Lower Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

This is what it was like during my final day at Yellowstone National Park. It was a lot of fun to be out there in such a heavy storm but as always, you have to be aware of where you point your lens so the glass doesn’t get wet. Using a long lens hood helps but that is only possible on telephoto lenses whereas with most wide angles you are kind of S.O.L.

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Firehole River at Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

My original intention was to make a fancy multimedia video from my Yellowstone coverage but then it occurred to me that would be unnecessary because Yellowstone National Park speaks for itself so I’ll just stick to sharing unedited video clips.

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Nature video of Black Growler Steam Vent, Yellowstone National Park. This is the Porcelain Basin area of Norris Geyser Basin.

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Bison Sparring, Yellowstone NP

Bison look docile most of the time since they spend much of the day grazing grass. But then other times they make you go, “Whoa!” If you’ve never seen a bison up-close, maybe this will give you some context: One day a large bison walked past my rental van and I noticed in the rear-view mirror than it was larger than the SUV behind me!

Female Tourist Photographing Herd of Bison, Yellowstone NP

Many tourists must not know any better or are just plain dumb as I couldn’t believe some of the things they did to get photos of bison. One morning as I was walking back to my car at Upper Geyser Basin, I had to pause for a few minutes because a large buffalo was grazing next to the trail. However there was a mom who had her 20-something daughter stand next to the buffalo so she could pose for a picture. The park literature tells you to stay at least 75 feet from them because they can run up to 30 mph and weigh 2,000 lbs. Apparently the girl wasn’t afraid of getting gored. I on the other hand was scared for the girl and my own life for that matter.

Check out this classic video which is displayed at the Yellowstone National Park Visitor Center:

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Sunset Lake, Yellowstone NP

I learned early on as a photographer that gloomy skies can be used effectively in landscape photography if you know what to look for. You can’t do much with the white, featureless type of skies but when you have the dark storm clouds with well-defined separation between clouds then it can lead to some moody landscapes which are just as exciting to photograph as nice sunsets in my opinion. The drawback? I had to call it a day shortly after making this picture because the rain started to come down hard by this point…

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Opalescent Pool, Yellowstone National Park

Given that it was overcast for the majority of the trip, I often had to work around the dreary-looking skies by focusing my attention toward the ground. I’ll admit to having cursed at the weather more than a few times but I think it also pushed me to look for different compositions than I would have otherwise. Even when photographing subject matter without skies like in this photo at the Opalescent Pool, conditions can change. On this first day, there were clear reflections because the water was relatively still. When I re-visited this location several days later, I couldn’t repeat the same composition because there were no reflections due to the wind causing too many ripples in the water.

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Ice Bubbles on Yellowstone Lake

Yellowstone Lake more closely resembled a big ice skating rink than a lake. Since the lake lies at a higher elevation than most of the other popular areas of the park, it was one of the few places other than the mountain peaks that there was still a significant amount of winter snow leftover.

I thought the ice patterns were pretty cool so I tried to take photos but it was sort of tricky because the shoreline in this area wasn’t frozen so I had to step into the lake a little bit to reach the ice. Not owning a pair of hip waders though, I had no intention of getting my boots soaked by freezing water in a snow storm so I had to bend over as far as I could from where I was standing in the shallow water to reach this. Next time I’m going to man up and just walk in there barefoot! (And have towels and chemical warmers on the shoreline of course:-)

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My plan was to drive around the entire central loop of the park so after the Grand Canyon, I drove straight through Hayden Valley because I saw no wildlife and stopped at the Mud Volcano trail. Unfortunately the trail was closed due to bear sightings so I wasn’t able to see much but what I did see was fascinating. Play the video and crank up the bass on your speakers. In hindsight I would have recorded a longer video but I probably wasn’t thinking coherently.

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Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

There are a few places in the U.S. that are just so amazing that every photographer has to go photograph for themselves no matter how popular it is. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of those places. Consider yourself fortunate if you can make it out of a postcard hot spot like this without incident though.

I was standing in a forested section of Artist’s Point minding my own business, camera in backpack, when I hear a man come up behind me asking his wife to tell me to move out of his way. So the wife walks up next to me and asks, “Are you going to take a picture?” “I’m thinking about it.” “Well, can you move out of the way so my husband can take photos?” I point to the space directly to my left with exactly the same view, “He is welcome to stand right here next to me.” The husband then decides to speak for himself, “You aren’t taking photos so why don’t you just move out of the way until I’m done?”

Now I’ve been burned in situations like this enough to know that you never move out of the way for another photographer unless they are your friend because they will disrespect you even if you generously agree to move by camping out in that spot right after you leave. I had been polite up until this point so my next response was silence. My back was turned to this guy the whole time when I hear him constantly griping to his wife about me, “Thinking about taking a photo, ugh!” After about five minutes of having a peaceful moment to myself, I figured he had left already so I turned to leave when the photographer finally decides to speak for himself, “I could have already finished taking photos by now! What a waste of time!” As I faced him, I smiled because his behavior was just too funny to ignore so I told him, “Have a nice trip.” then left. What I was really hoping for was that he would trip and fall over the South Rim but a man can dream, right?

The whole point of this story is that photographers have no more right to be somewhere than any other tourist. I was there first with a lot of space available, no camera in hand so the other photographer felt that I was just in the way since I wasn’t doing anything other than enjoying the view. His inability to enjoy a place as amazing as this was laughable so I really didn’t take him seriously at all. In fact, my experience was even better because of this incident since I got blog post out of it.

Put the camera down sometimes. Yellowstone is a beautiful place.

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Elk Grazing in Fresh Snow Near Madison River, Yellowstone NP, WY

The end of the 2nd day ended much like how the 1st day went, stormy. It was still raining / snowing when my alarm went off at 4 a.m. the next day, so I was pleased to find a landscape covered in light powder when I entered the park later that morning. It was really cold and windy which gave me a lot of respect for what the wildlife endures to survive. If you think that working an office job is tough or doing laundry on a Sunday afternoon, try finding food in the wilderness when everything is covered in snow in sub-freezing temperatures with large predators lurking around every corner ready to eat you. The wildlife of Yellowstone do this 365 days a year. Truly amazing.

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Mammoth Hot Springs Minerva Terrace, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

When I walked up to the Minerva Terrace, the first thing that struck me was an eerily resemblance to Salvador Dali’s style of painting. This part of Mammoth Hot Springs is surreal and the dead trees further add to this effect. With Dali as inspiration, I sought out a composition that simplified the scene which best highlighted the surreal aspects in my opinion.

I stopped in Mammoth twice during the trip but only photographed it this first time because this was the only time the light was suitable for what I was looking to do.

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Photographer's Brocken Spectre in Terrace Spring, Yellowstone NP, WY

I first heard of the Brocken Spectre via Galen Rowell’s books. I have personally seen it three times in my life, twice on airplanes while flying over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and now my own Spectre of Brocken at Yellowstone National Park. I was taking run-of-the-mill hand-held snapshots of Terrace Spring when I noticed the halo around my camera shadow amidst the steam. From what I understand, the Brocken Spectre only appears when the sun is directly behind an object where there is a shadow on clouds. Given the unique conditions and high vantage point necessary to view this, typically only rock climbers and airplane passengers can view this optical phenomenon. Luckily for me, I had to do nothing more than walk along the tourist boardwalk.

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Colloidal Pool in Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone NP, WY

On my 2nd day, I spent my time between the Norris Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs. The Porcelain Basin Loop trail around Norris Geyser Basin was especially interesting in my opinion. It seemed like the entire ground was steaming and spewing stuff out in this area. I thought the most interesting aspect was focusing on the patterns in the various pools and bacterial mats. Without a sense of scale, an abstract photo like this could resemble an aerial photo of the Arctic.

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Giant Geyser, Yellowstone NP, Wyoming

Almost all of my photo processing is done in a fairly straightforward manner that conforms with general editorial standards. But there have been a few instances where I felt that there were images that could better convey my feeling of the experience by taking liberties with the processing. Giant Geyser is one image that was quite stormy and monochrome colored but didn’t capture the feeling of coldness so I felt that I could make something much more in line with how I felt by running some modified Lightroom 2 presets.

I’ve seen some photographers that label certain images on their site as “manipulated” but I personally do not feel anyone should have to do so unless you are running a news website. You don’t see advertising photographers making those distinctions. Let the viewer decide for themselves what is acceptable or not. However when it comes to servicing editorial clients, you should always be upfront about this and let them know if there is an inquiry regarding the photo in question. You have to disclose upfront before licensing images such as this if you hope to run an ethical photography business. Most experienced editors should know the difference but if they don’t, you should inform them.

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Adult Bison and Calf Playing, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

The Morning Glory Pool is an excellent (or not) example of how vandalism can permanently damage Yellowstone’s natural features. The signs along the boardwalk say that people throwing objects inside of the heated pool plugs up the waterways changing the chemical makeup of the pool, and thus prevents it from heating up as high as it used to. The blue colors toward the middle of hot springs represent the hottest temperatures =200 degrees or so while the outer edges fading to red are from organisms that live in cooler water. The Morning Glory Pool at one time was completely blue but now the middle is a greenish shade of color. It is now nicknamed, Fading Glory.

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Pump Geyser in Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone NP, Wyoming

Driving down to Yellowstone from Bozeman, Montana, it was snowing hard in the Gallatin Range. At certain points, the snow was blowing horizontally straight into the car. Oddly enough, the ground wasn’t really wet because none of it stuck. It was kind of exciting! When I went to the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park in the early evening, the weather was much the same. It’s not apparent in this photo but the faded areas in front of the trees is actually blowing snow.

Though uncomfortable, the main benefit was that the weather kept the crowds down. It’s always a trade-off. If you are a landscape photographer or after a pure nature experience at the popular national parks you have to go during times that the average tourist does not. And of course, that means you have to go before tourist season and/or visit during uncomfortable conditions.

Though the original intent for the National Parks was conservation, a certain amount of promotion is deemed necessary to raise funds and “awareness” but that leads to the problems that plague some of these parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. They are too popular and many visitors still do not care about preserving these places or the wildlife that inhabits them. I don’t have any solutions for how to balance these contrasting priorities but when there are pennies thrown into a hot springs when the signs say not to, then clearly there is more destruction going on than conservation. When people abuse wildlife because they are causing a traffic jam, that’s not conservation either. The only way to these parks can remain “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” is if visitors respect the land and leave no trace when done.

I’m just glad that Old Faithful hasn’t stopped pumping out water yet due to human-related reasons.

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