Yellowstone Fog
Sometimes when you’re out photographing, you know that you’re in some really special conditions that give you the opportunity to make some incredible images. Your job then becomes finding and making those images. That’s what happened to us on the morning in Yellowstone before we took our hike to Mystic Falls.
I’ve mentioned before that there seem to be places that have a certain photographic quality to them. Places that are rich with photographic opportunities; photogenic so to speak. You can often see them in the distance and they speak to you to come over, to spend a little time there. Ann has learned to see them, which has relieved me of the burden of both driving and trying to find these places at the same time. I can’t describe the pleasure I had the first time that Ann said, “Dan, can we get over there? I think there’s some real opportunities there!” And when I slowed down to look at where she was pointing, to find out that she was right.
Well, our morning shoot was one of those locations, and going there that morning was confirmation that one should return to “those” locations again and again because not only do you see more, you get to photograph them under differing conditions. And this time it was fog.
The spot is right along a main road in Yellowstone, but with nowhere to park. It’s probably about 3/4 of a mile stretch of road, but you have to park beyond either end of the stretch and walk a quarter mile or so before you get to the interesting part. But it’s worth it, despite the fact that cars will be blowing past you while you walk on the shoulder of the road.
We had hopes of getting there for a particular image Ann had in mind. The fog blew that image out of the water, and so we adapted to the conditions. It was just before sunrise and at first, we could barely see anything through the darkness.
It’s hard capturing that sense of isolation and darkness in the predawn fog. And I’m not sure if that feeling is conveyed better in black and white . . .
. . . or in color.
By the time I made it another quarter mile down the road, the sun was coming. Of course, the fog blocked most of it, but what the sunlight offered was a bit of color, which I immediately tried to take advantage of.
But fog being fog, it came in waves of different densities and at times you’d be blanketed in it.
Similar but somewhat different conditions exist on either side of the road, so I kept going back and forth from one side to the other, searching for images, . . .
. . . trying to find images that conveyed the alien nature of the trees and this place.
When you’ve been photographing in an exciting place for awhile, at some point you become mentally if not physically exhausted and you begin to wonder whether you’re repeating yourself or, more importantly, not really photographing with intention. The subject in front of you is just so interesting it seems like wherever you point your camera there is an image to be made. It’s hard to slow down and ask yourself, “Why am I making this image?” But you really don’t want to even slow down because you know it won’t last forever.
I guess that was the advantage with the fog that morning. We knew it was going to end, which was motivation to push on just a bit longer.
And end it did. Eventually the fog burned off and by the time it did, the sun was much higher than we’d wanted and totally washed out the subtle colors that are in this area when the light is very low or just over the horizon. In mere moments the landscape was flooded with light, so changing the conditions that it was hard enough to just see, nonetheless photograph. So we called it a day and walked back to Beast.
I’m still not sure about these images. What I’ve re-learned from my old large format days is that photographing in fog (and snow) is difficult. There is often a lightness to fog (or snow) that turns to gloomy grey when processed incorrectly. Sometimes that dreadful feeling is what you want, often it isn’t. I guess I simply haven’t discovered what these images really want to be.