Part 2: 2 Week Road Trip Travel Story – Yellowstone

The second installment (third week of being featured in the Home & Away Travel Section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), of our 2 week road travel trip that took us from St. Louis through the Badlands and Yellowstone.  Where the Badlands was a feature almost on “texture” of the lands, Yellowstone is very much a feature of color.  With such a big travel story to do all at one time, I really tried finding different looks knowing the editors would want to vary it up a bit since they were running in back to back weeks.   This cover shot below – and what is the cover shot of this weekend’s Home & Away section of the paper, was one of 3 shots I was thinking would be big enough for the cover.  I had one night to do this idea, and wouldn’t you know, it rains the entire time up until sunset.  We make it up to the lookout point and it’s swarming with bugs.  It was horrible! The shot I had in mind at first was actually the sunset shot framed with the backlit trees a few pictures down.  As we were escaping the flying bugs and headed back into our bus (actually in the picture) I noticed THE shot.  Sunset. People. Great retro bus grille and Yellowstone on the license plate.  I love it.  If you don’t get a chance to see the paper, you can read the travel story on STLToday.

Above: The cover shot to the Home & Away section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Above: One of the first things I noticed as we entered Yellowstone: Lodge Pole Pines and fire. Or the remnants of past fires. These dense growing “weed” trees are everywhere. The grow hard and fast and being so compacted together, the vertical lines are awesome to see. Yellowstone has been hit with fires and the most recent ones even dating back to the 80’s are still there to see. Blackened pole trees – very striking.

Above: The original idea for a cover shot I had with the silhouetted treed framing the sunset over the lake. As mentioned above, taking the picture was tough when millions of tiny flies/bugs are swarming and flying in and out of your mouth/nose. I still love this shot but it take a backseat to the one I finally settled on. The retro bus we took on our tour around Yellowstone was one way to relax and enjoy the sights as opposed to driving ourselves. We were there right before the “busy season” but as you can see, when the tourists come, you do a lot of waiting on the roads.

Above: Of course, going to Yellowstone as a photographer, your goal is to get some cool animal shots. Specifically bears. Our second day there did not disappoint as this 2 year old grizzly came a little to close to a visitor’s center by the Fishing Bridge. Within seconds of being spotted, a half dozen rangers and photographers with gigantic lenses that put mine to shame, were on the scene. This guy, so we were told, was probably wandering looking for an area of his own after being kicked out by mom earlier in the season. He was trying to cross the main road by Fishing Bridge as rangers tried holding traffic to let him cross. It didn’t work. He never crossed. Another thing about photographing bears? Don’t run trying to get the shot. I learned the hard way as I followed more experienced photographers trying to grab the shot, but rangers quickly yelled at us about running. Never run around bears. Never!

Above: Colors. The colors are beautiful in Yellowstone. The smells, well, they take some getting used to. The rotten eggs smell of sulfur is quite pronounced at most of hot spots.

Above: Bison. Probably the animal we saw the most. These guys are so much bigger than I expected to see. This shot was the night we were on our bus tour and we spotted this herd silently hanging out among a grove of lodge poll pines. Motionless. It was beautiful and spooky.

Above: Another shot I was hoping to get was of bison crossing the road among traffic. Just seems like Yellowstone to me. Tourists and bison.

Above: Closest we got to any animal, this particular elk was looking for something to eat while several dozen cars of tourists got out to take his picture. The bison on the right…I yelled to stop the car as we passed this buy late one afternoon as the framing was perfect with the hills and snow capped mountains. I had maybe 30 seconds to set up before he walked out of the scene.

Above: Same elk from above, but from a different angle. I wanted a different shot than what everyone else was getting so I got around the elk to get a perspective from what he was looking at. An animal this close to the road causes jams that could last 30min plus.
A report, published in the Psychiatric Times in 2016, said that there is an overlap between eating disorders and affective levitra online disorders, have led clinicians to ponder explanatory models,” the report said. “Although some lines of evidence suggest a shared etiology between the disorders (e.g. serotonergic dysfunction), the manner and extent to which shared biological factors are at play is not clear. Autism affects kids’ developmental capacity and doesn’t have any known genuine long haul side-effects there is expanding worry that a large portion of these levitra no prescription try this link now youthful men could get to be psychologically dependent and consequently not able to perform attractively without taking sildenafil mixes. Any delay caused in urological problems can make the health issue worse and it can even become a serious problem cialis 20 mg among many men. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and hope teen buy canada levitra sex goes away.

Above: On the lookout for wolves. The one shot I didn’t get. But we tried. Several nights. We saw a coyote that was large enough to be mistaken for a wolf, but I think you have to be up pretty early and be in the right spots with a bigger lens than what I had (70-200). If I get the chance to come back next time, I’m bringing a big boy lens. Spotting scopes were very popular and I may bring one next time.

Above: More color, texture and areas cleared by fire and hot water. This was on one of our 4 hour hikes where we were completely by ourselves other than our guides. I highly suggest doing one if you get the chance. You get off the main trails where 99% of people go, and you get to see and experience so many fantastic things.

Above: I am nominating this shot as probably my favorite of Yellowstone. This was also another I thought would be “big” enough for a cover shot. Love the framing. The bend of the rod. The line cast. The fish on the end. The bison and mountains in the background. This may be a large print for me.

Above: Grand Prismatic Basin. That was supposed to be my big day for super color rich photos…and it stormed the whole time. We actually walked the boardwalk in the rain and even though my colors were obscured, I was able to capture a lot of “dark personality” and mystery.

Above: still in the Grand Prismatic area, and with the help of some wind, it cleared for a super colorful shot.

Above: More texture and a different color set from that same area. Most people left because of the weather which was actually pretty cool to be there almost by yourself.

Above: The most famous one, Old Faithful. We had scheduled only a few hours to stop here before heading to the Grand Tetons. And just our luck, it was overcast and raining. I was soaked. My gear was soaked. Don’t get me wrong, it was totally fun, but from a photography perspective, it was a bummer. The clouds, sky and rain all blended in with the geyser once it went off.

Above: Here’s the shot. I don’t care for it other than knowing it was Old Faithful, but I wanted to show you what it looked like on camera. It was still cool to see in person, but I had hoped for a better picture.

Above: Our last full evening at Yellowstone and my 8yo and I were out driving around by ourselves exploring, looking for wolves. We never did come across wolves but we got to spend a lot of time exploring which we thought was cool. During the “blue” hour of sunset, we headed back to our hotel and this particular area and scene just begged for me to pull off the road. I had my tripod in the car and was able to take few great shots before our light ended.