The forest appears like a mad baker came and frosted every needle with white frosting right after a snowstorm! Every needle, limb, and exposed truck is coated in the white stuff creating a delicate outline of each tree. There is no question of seeing the trees from the forest! The pattern is spectacular and stops me in my tracks every time. The inner turmoil is to bring back the story in color or B&W? The difference between the two is minimal at most and yet, it is there. In these instances, I shoot both mediums and let time make the final decision which I prefer in the final analysis. The scenario always leaves me asking, is it live or is it monochrome?

Darkness comes at the dinner hour, frost covers the grasses at sunrise, and the nip in the air forces a jacket. Winter is here and looking up at the Bitterroots one can see the white stuff building up and coming on down the slope. The snows come in small storms leaving behind a few inches each time. The 10,000 foot peaks are all white now, the perfect cap for photographing them against the storms as they come and go. I have a few locations I like to stop and capture their drama in the breaks and recently, they have been pretty dramatic with B&W bringing that drama to life. This year, I decided to attempt to record it as the blanket creeps down.

Firehole Falls in Yellowstone is a favorite of mine. I stop there every opportunity though in principle it never changes. The “washing” away of a couple of tress a few years back opened up the view to the falls making shooting there even more advantageous. So last week we had a moment, the time of day was right so we stopped. We were set up shooting when we started to see dark steaks leaping into the falls. At first, none of us could actually believe what we were seeing. Then we tried to get shots of just it (which meant changing shutter speeds) and low and behold, it was trout! In all my decades there, it’s a sight I’d never seen but it was so cool to watch! Who’d thunk it, leaping trout?