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.

I have to apologize for today’s blog post. I have a couple of rather lengthy posts in the works, but things have not panned out as planned, so they’re not quite ready yet. Instead, you get some thoughts I had after I’d sent Len an image in one of our photo swaps. I decided to look at a series of images made of essentially the same subject over a 35-minute period in Goblin Valley State park. I made other images in-between these, but I kept turning back to this subject because of the incredible light show it was providing.

Delving into some of my other photographs from West Yellowstone I came across some images from my point-and-shoot taken from one of our initial “scouting” trips and became captivated by them. In some ways, they were much better than many of the images I took earlier that day with my “real camera.” That’s as good a reason as any to develop them a bit further.

I did another one of those “pick a date and see what’s there” exercises and while I must admit I was greatly disappointed by what I found (sometimes the photographs aren’t nearly as great as the experience), I forced myself to go back and carefully look at the images. I’m glad I did.

I’ve returned to working on more of my images from last Fall’s trip. This time, I decided to select a folder that only had a date, unsure of what precisely lie within, to choose my images to develop and then post. I was surprised at what I found - material enough for two posts! One post I knew I would do the day I was photographing the images (the subject of the next post), but the other set (this post) came as a surprise.

Things don’t always pan out the way you hope. Especially when it comes to a creative endeavor. SPOILER ALERT: you’ll find no flashes of brilliance in this blog post. On the positive side, there are more photographs than the last one, and a lot fewer words! So come join us at one of the most incredible landscapes we’ve come across.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about photography lately as I work my way through last year’s fall trip images (hard to think that it’s been over a year). This is the first of two posts, if things work out, thinking about what is landscape photography and am I a “landscape photographer.”

Sometimes you have to work to find an image. Other images, well, they slap you across the face, screaming to be made. Kind of like Tommy Lee Jones (Agent K) in Men in Black, screaming to the giant cockroach “Eat me! EAT ME!!!!” Except in my case, it’s, “Shoot me, shoot me!!!” Today’s image is one of the latter.