It’s pouring raining, I mean giant Alaska raindrop rain. The wind could pick you up and set you down not so gently. It’s perfect wx to be out shooting, if, if you can find that one element the eye wants to latch on to in its journey to make sense of a scene. That’s when the power of white and bright comes into play. In a scene like you see above, the amount, percentage of total image the white inhabits is a really small percentage. Yet it’s enough to grab the eye first and then the rest of the image moves the eye around the frame taking in the storm until moving back to white & bright. Light & Bright at the top of the frame is the mind’s eye happy place but you can place it anywhere in the frame to grab the viewer’s attention. The question is, do the rest of the elements in the frame support that arrangement of elements to delight the eye and tell a story. Keep in mind that while light & bright can be an positive, it can also be a negative pulling the eye away from the subject. It’s totally up to you to control the power of white & bright!

It’s totally abstract, not just the image but the concept that the snow and ice in the photograph could be thousands of years old. Now being exposed for the first time and the glacier melts away, time is literally being exposed to light for the first time. The patterns of how the snow was laid down, then slide around and finally carved by the winds of time so intrigued me. Shooting with the Z 9 in B&W, I went from shooting the Z24-120 to the Z70-200, back to the Z24-120 then to the Z70-200 with the Z1.4x. I couldn’t get enough of all the ice carvings glaring in the bright noon sun. It was a great hour just exploring the mountains with my camera looking for patterns the matched up with my vivid imagination. I have the feeling it’s one of those “you had to be there” kind of photos since there is no reference to place. But it was a place where I loved just staring at the ice of the ages.

Landscape photography is so much easier when you beat the sun up and outlast it when it sets. At those moments, you can cherry pick the light like on this morning in Yellowstone’s high country. The first light of the day strikes the high peaks with the valley floor below still in shadow. This is very dramatic light and then you add in the effect of the clouds, well it’s like shooting fish in a barrel photography. Setting the Z 9 to Monochrome (B&W) it was just that simple to make the photo. Then the power of white grabs your eye, takes you to the top of Electric Peak and then around and back to it. The only hardship this morning, doing all of this with no coffee yet. The photograph left me a warm glow though so I made it until I had a cup. The power of white!

Old Faithful is an iconic symbol of so many things. While mostly of Yellowstone Nationals Park, but also of the west and those first explorers who brought back its wonders to the world. It got its name back in 1870 from the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition because it seemed to spout “faithfully” every 63 to 70 minutes. It can push out nearly 8400 gallons of very hot water when it erupts! I don’t know how many times I’ve stood there and watched it go over our forty years of visiting it, but it never grows old. I’ve been very fortunate to see Steamboat blow which is much larger but there is just something about Old Faithful that never gets old!
While I watch it blow every time I’m there, I don’t always photograph it. The photo above is the only photo I took of it on this last trip that was two weeks long. I watched it with the camera at my side but no clicks. Why? I think sharing my favorite of mine of Old Faithful photograph (below, from 2020) probably explains it the best. I’m looking in my photo of Old Faithful the power it brings to the landscape. I want a combination of that powerful background with a great eruption which for me is not height, but vertical strength. I like it best when it’s cold so you can see the steam really well (-10 or colder) and no wind. I then stand where I can have that column of steam as vertical as possible. Then I want to be able to go as wide as possible because Old Faithful belongs in that vast grand landscape. She’s not the same as first described in 1870, not the same power, and doesn’t blow as faithfully. They say it’s possible she might go away in our lifetime which would be a great loss to me. Such a grand symbol of our wilderness and exploration. It’s why I try to capture its power, Old Faithful, keeping it young.

I probably could have used more glass, but that little cloud cut me some slack making the image. Some of the best landscapes are just slivers of the overall scene. They catch our attention but in taking the photo, often there is something we’ve read that says you need to shoot landscapes wide, close the lens down to its smallest f/stop, and filter like crazy. When the image pops up on the computer, it leaves you short of the feeling you had when you were standing there. That’s when you know you should have zoomed in!

I say zoom as that is typically the lens landscape photographers have in their kit. For me, it’s the 180-400VR and the Z70-200f2.8. In this case, the Z70-200f2.8 and the Z1.4x were all I had in my bag at the time. Heading up Bear Creek Road, I pulled over as soon as I could safely and jumped out. The whole range was gorgeous but it was the light on these crags that truly caught my eye. That’s when I needed all the reach I had with me. The detail highlighted by the light in the scene shot with a lens like the Z14-24 would have been too small, you wouldn’t have known the subject or its story. Next time you’re arranging the elements in the viewfinder and the detail just doesn’t smack you right between the eyes, remember to zoom into the land!

One of my favorite times to be out with romantic light on the landscape is after winter storms. The landscape is blanketed in white and the clouds are busy jostling for what remains of the moisture. The scene is in total flux as the winds push it all westward. At one moment there is nothing to photograph and the next, you can’t point and shoot fast enough. And there is no more romantic medium for the chase than B&W! That’s how it was yesterday afternoon as we traveled down the Bitterroot enjoying the views. The only challenge on the icy roads was finding a place to pull over safely, fast enough to make the shot as they were happening left and right as we drove.
I was out with the Z 9 shooting B&W. The Z 6II / Z 7II do a gorgeous job with B&W right out of the camera B&W files, I wanted to experience the Z 9 B&W update and it’s gorgeous! In a heartbeat, I made quick changes to my Picture Control settings and I was off to the races. A change I made that I didn’t see coming was to the firing rate. I don’t need 40 frames of a rock so I have to get use to changing the FPS when shooting landscapes. It was fun though, the Z 9 rips!