Yellowstone – A Ground for Experiment

Last week I was in Yellowstone National Park with friend and photographer Brendan Quigley. I was there to work on shooting more images for a project that I started last year and he was there with me, well, because he has never been there. And what a better way to see this amazing place than with someone who has been there 46 times now. I know, I know, that screams obsessive, compulsive something or other, but Yellowstone is truly one of the most unique environments on our planet. It is the most intact eco-system in the United States, and a photographers dream come true. Our mission was simple–eat, sleep, and live photography for 5 days.

Yellowstone boasts one of the most heavily trafficked National Parks in the country, 4th below Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks respectively. That gives this place 2.7 million visitors a year! So as a photographer there is a ton of competition. The flip side is that there is more to photograph than a person has years. While most photographers head out to the iconic locations at sunrise and sunset, I head out to the lesser known spots. In addition, I find things to photograph all day long. The images in this post are a great case-in-point. Taken when? High-Noon. A time when only gunslingers are out, not photographers. My mission here was to shoot color and texture and to attempt that earlier, due to the ambient temps at this time of year, would have yielded images full of steam. So what did I do? Simple. I added a polarizer to my lens. This gave me the ability to take any reflection off of the water and let those bacteria colors shine through.

Since I have travelled to the Greater Yellowstone Eco-system so many times now, I am on a mission to highlight some of subjects that are often overlooked by the new-comer. For me, these images are more about the creation of art than anything else and that is the main reason I became a photographer. It is my means of creative expression.