I posted this photo on my IG account on the 1st. It’s a real simple click taken jumping out of the truck shooting the Z6 / 180-400VR hand-held and then hopping back in the truck out of the -16 temps. The photo is right out of the Z6 which was set to Monochrome (here are my in camera B&W settings). The only “Post” was done in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) using the Split Grad to make the clouds look angier. Below are those settings. And that’s it, easy...
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The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is such a gorgeous place! It’s a really photographer friendly place as you can’t take a bad picture there. Shooting from Artist’s Point, the draw up the Canyon to the falls is breathtaking. Then you add in the snow, the wind, the cold, the sound and the color, well that’s a sensory overload that the camera can’t even imagine. How do you smack the viewer between the eyes with all of that when they are looking at your photo from the warmth of their home? I quick and simple way is putting it all in their face! Shooting with a telephoto does a great job doing that. In this case, shooting with the Z7 / 180-400VR, the top photo was taken at 180mm and the bottom at 560mm. But coming right in on the ice (making sure it stays blue cause it’s cold!), you bring it to life. The imagination “hears” the roar of the water on the left and the mind because of...
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There’s a “new” view in Yellowstone and it’s gorgeous! The Park Service for the last eighteen months worked on the Uncle Tom vista of Upper Yellowstone Falls and it’s really spectacular. This is the first winter it’s open and it was quite a treat to be one of the first to see it. This is a simple click taken with the Z7 / Z24-70. Not knowing the splendor of this vastly “improved” vista, I walked to the vista with no tripod. I wanted though to have some movement to the water. With the built-in stablizer in the Z7, I was able to shoot at 1/8 hand-held and capture some movement. If you head to the park, make sure to take in this new view of your wild...
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Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone Nat’l Park up until eight months ago had a frequency of eruption of 50 years. In the past eight months, it’s erupted thirty-five times, the thirty-fifth time was 12:35MT today! At 10:18 this morning, we were standing in front of Steamboat Geyser, you can see a “minor” eruption in the photo above. It erupted last on the 16th so the odds where it would go off but as we stood there and shot, we said, “place your bets” because we didn’t think we would see the 300′ World’s Tallest Geyser go. Wouldn’t you know it, two hours after we left that platform, minutes after we left the parking lot, that she blows! Who...
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On a stormy, snow, blustery day in Yellowstone where the critters are back in the woods hunkered down, there’s one place I love to go and shoot. That’s Mud Pot Basin. It’s a moody place on stormy days, great for shooting. If you put in the time, one geyser will perform, Spasm. What I like about it is the spray tends to never be the same second to second. The steam on cold days, (0 with windchill) can be as much of the photo as the eruption. Shooting with the Z7 / Z24-70, I had the camera set to Continuous High Extended and when I say the eruption, just held the shutter release down. Then once back at the computer, picked the image with the best elements to finish. I just love the...
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As I blew the 18″ of snow that fell during the night, my mind started to wonder about all the white. You gotta understand I love living in snow, the white transforms the landscape into shapes, contours and mysterious forms setting the imagination on fire. And as I worked the snow, I was paying attention to what was catching my attention in the all-white world (besides Sadie who is always by my side playing in the new snow with such joy!). The answer was pretty obvious, once I stopped and thought about it. It was just a smidge of color! I then came in from my three-hour fun outside and went to my files to see if my conclusion held true in my photographs. Now I have plenty of photographs where there is a smidge of white to set off the rest of the color in the scene. But with little effort, I found plenty of examples in my own files where just a smidge of color really set...
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