Yellowstone Rocks

I think I’ve mentioned before that like a lot of photographers, it’s hard for me to pass up a good tree without pulling out the camera.  I also must confess that the same is true about rocks.  And to be honest, it’s probably harder to pass up a good rock than a good tree.  So today’s post comes from a big rock formation we drove past just south of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park.

As we drove past the rock formation heading north, I commented to Ann that we had to stop on the way back south (where we’d been camping).  And that we did.  But while I took several landscape photographs, none of them seem nearly as interesting to me as the rock shots.  

While they’re not as abstract as some of the compositions I do, they’re along the same vein.  They serve no other purpose than to be, if not pleasing to the eye, at least visually interesting. 

It was still fall, so there’s some color in the vegetation, which gave some interesting contrast with the largely black and white rocks.

And the one image that was devoid of colorful vegetation called out to me to be purely black and white. 

I may have to try and print that one - what textures!

And there was a set of images that required me to walk back to the vehicle to get the big lens.  Given where the formation was (across the road and about 10 feet above ground level), I had to use the long telephoto and perch myself up on a narrow fork created by two rocks - a foot and two tripod legs on the shorter outcropping, and my other boot in a crack in the bigger boulder with the third tripod leg nestled in a small notch next to it.  I had no room to move around, a difficult view of the back of my camera lens, and a constant fear of falling 5 feet to the ground.  I’m speaking of my camera and the lens, not so much myself (though that is starting to hurt a lot more than it used to when it happens).

Sometimes you have to take a bit of a risk to photograph something enjoyable to look at.