Grant Nakamura’s Photography Blog

My day began early as usual here in Gardiner, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with my plans to practice some more moonlight shots. Dave’s slideshow last night gave me some “pause” as to how I was approaching moonlight, so I was anxious to try a different approach. But overcast skies prevented that idea.

However, as I was leaving for the conference room (free internet access), the moon poked through the clouds so I detoured to shoot the moon over the Roosevelt arch. The mixed lighting of the moonlight and the street lights created a very unusual scene. I like it.

We met as a group at the HQ, the Best Western motel, around 8 am and divided up into smaller carpools. I volunteered to drive since my car was already a victim of the park. No need to risk another’s vehicle to the fates and fancies of the wildlife of the park.

We stopped at a couple of places on our way to the first photo location to hear from George about both the natural history and the politics of creating the park. George is a great storyteller and has a good sense of humor and irony as he explains things.

With the soft light of the cloudy day, I knew that contrast would be low, i.e., the tonal range would be narrow. How nostalgic. My first workshop here in Yellowstone was the same way, but at that time I was very naive and just shot and shot (oh, the benefits of digital photography). I did create some of my favorite images of the park from that shoot in Mammoth. Just dumb luck, I guess.

Our first location of the workshop was the Mammoth Hot Springs campground. How was I going to use my newly gained, and, hopefully, refined knowledge and experience to create even better images? I thought I’d start by using the exercise that Doug Johnson had us use: start with environment shots, then intimate portraits, and, finally, abstract images.

As it turned out, when we arrived at the upper terrace, the clouds seemed to be thinning. Since I had already spent an evening on the upper terrace, I thought I’d “go walkabout.” The loop road around the upper terrace is closed to motorized as well as foot traffic (just ski touring and snowshoeing). The road was hard snowpack, so I didn’t go back for my snowshoes since I knew I wouldn’t be damaging the trail.

It was quite a climb up to Orange Mound spring. The only time I’ve been there was in the fall and by car. It was much steeper than I remembered. I really only had time for a couple of short stops to shoot, but the hike was worth it. I now know that there are plenty of great places to shoot on the road when I have more time.

The weather began to clear, and by the time I reached the Orange Mound spring is was bright sunlight. So much for the soft light and low contrast.

The lower springs down by Liberty Cap were backlit and the mist was blowing directly onto the boardwalk. I tried out a few high contrast, back lit images.

On our way back to the motel a small group of Big Horn sheep entertained us and several other photographers. Really big telephoto lenses made their appearance.

After lunch, Dave gave a wonderful lecture on Digital Exposure. Each time I hear a lecture on exposure I deepen my understanding, this was not an exception. Exposing for the highlights was again heard, but much better understood. I “overlaid” Ansel Adams’ concept of “placement and fall” with Dave’s lecture material. It’s all making more sense to me. Now, I just have to practice it more and more.

Our afternoon/evening field trip went up a steep gravel road to a mining town with a now defunct mine. We stopped at several spots along the road to discuss the natural history of the environment and, shockingly, take pictures.

Now, off to eat and then work on all the photographs…and, hopefully, sleep!!!

Talk to you tomorrow…

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 7:14 am and is filed under Photo Shoots, Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.