Rocky Mountain National Park

As the last evening and morning of our trip, we made a really quick trip through Rocky Mountain National Park. Several of us went to the top of the world (so to speak) to photograph the sunset, while several stayed in the valley to photograph elk. I hope they got some good pictures, because I really enjoyed the sunset!


In the morning, we visited Sprague Lake for the sunrise. Elk wandered through this scene not too long after I took the picture, disrupting the smooth reflections.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone was really fantastic. Because our lodging was so far away, we couldn't really get into the park before the sunrise, but we did three sunsets there and had unique photographs each evening.

On our first trip, we drove by Lewis Falls - there was a quick little trail that takes you to this viewpoint, which is much better than from the road.


Across the river from the Grand Prismatic Spring, there's this interesting bit of runoff that goes into the river. The sun was peeking through the clouds when I took this picture.


On to West Thumb Geyser Basin - there are a lot of little pools here. Fantastic place to walk around.


On a different day, we visited Old Faithful a second time (much more interesting than the first).


After the sun went behind the hills at Gibbon Falls, there were a lot of nice details to see.


The following two photographs are from the Firehole River Drive.


Firehole Falls


On our last evening in Yellowstone, we went down Firehole Lake Drive just to see what was out there. When we saw the Great Fountain Geyser, we knew we had a place to shoot sunset. There were a handful of photographers there when we returned later in the evening (turns out we weren't the only ones to think of this). We got a little bit of light, and then the geyser erupted (we still have spots on our car!).


Grand Teton National Park

On our trip, we stayed at Togwotee Mountain Lodge and on the nearby Togwotee pass, there's a nice little lake called Wind River Lake. It was a nice lake to walk around and photograph.


Though we intermingled drives to the Tetons with drives to Yellowstone, our first destination was the Tetons. When you're in front of these fantastic mountains, it's hard to imagine photographing anything else. Here are two views from the famous Oxbow Bend, and the third is a famous barn with a very cloudy backdrop - I'll try to post another version of this when you can see the mountains behind. All three of these images incorporate multiple photographs - blended seamlessly together in Photoshop.






And this is a quiet little scene from Two Oceans Lake - there was a lot to explore on this little lake and I was glad we made the trip to see it. A moose wondered into the parking lot as we were leaving along with a local guy with a very long lens (600mm) trying to find the bear he had glimpsed. We didn't find the bear, but it was fun to talk to a true animal photographer.

September 16 - Grand Teton National Park

The camera club has just returned from a trip to the Tetons, Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park. The days were long, but went by very quickly - and there was a lot of driving! Anyway, over the next few days/weeks, I'll be adding pictures from the trip that I think turned out OK.

Here's one from Jackson Lake near the Coulter Bay boat dock . Half of the group decided to eat, but the rest of us were transfixed by the moon descending over the horizon. This is from a 13 minute exposure and my last of the evening - I wish I could have made a multi-hour exposure here, but we just didn't have the time.

September 5 - Rocky Mountain National Park Revisited

I decided to revisit some of my older images from RMNP and found this one that had potential. I often reprocess images after newer technology comes out. The capabilities of the current generation of software is far beyond what was available when I took this picture last year. And perhaps my skills have improved as well (at least I hope they have!).