I was in Yellowstone National Park in January for the Digital Landscape Workshop Series. Here's a couple of my favorites, the rest can be seen here Lookout Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Norris Geyser Basin Gibbon Falls Hot Spring Bison Artist Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Great pictures. The second one has a cool effect withe the lighting from behind the tree, The bison looks really cool as well. Great job.
Shots like this just make me hate Illinois with a burning passion. Look.. normally it's a nice place to live. But it's FLAT, and PLAIN! Yes, the plains are plain. I can barely remember that as a kid I used to live in Colorado, where it was possible to drive to an entirely different climate in a matter of hours. Still, there may be some potentially picturesque stuff along the Iowa border, and if I want to go all out there's Shawnee National Forest about five hours to the South that looks like a miniature Colorado, complete with actual topography. But about the pictures, my favorite is probably fairly standard, but it's the hot spring. The hint of color on the border of the water in the otherwise black and white scenery is a classic. I also can't help but appreciate the Bison shot.
Oh, I'm jealous! How was working and learning from Moose Peterson, Joe McNally and the others? Been reading their blogs and books and have gotten a lot of great ideas. How'd you keep yourself and cameras working in the weather? Could you do a review of your experience?
Thanks everyone! Scott, I'll work on a review a little later today. For now, I'll say that getting to shoot with Moose, Joe, Laurie, and the rest of the staff was awesome. I learned more about photography in 3 days than I have in the last couple years of reading books and blogs. In case anyone is wondering, they're going back to Yellowstone next January. If you are interested sign up soon because the last one sold out more than 6 months in advance.
wow, really beautiful gallery. Very nice. I have been looking forward to you sharing your experience at Yellowstone.
Re: Yellowstone DLWS Review Moose, Joe, Laurie, Kevin, and the entire staff are all great shooters and wonderful people to work with. For those who aren't familiar with them, Moose Peterson is one of the top wildlife and landscape photographers in the country. He specializes in documenting endangered species for wildlife research groups, and has been in the photography business for 30 years. Joe McNally is a freelance photographer and photojournalist who has worked for National Geographic, Life, Time, ESPN, Sports Illustrated (the list goes on and on and on...). Joe is a great photographer and has forgotten more about using a flash than most people ever hope to learn. Laurie Excell is a good wildlife and landscape photographer who started out selling cameras, and is the equipment expert in the group. DLWS usually starts with a Sunday evening session where the instructors show their work and talk about some of the basics of landscape photography. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they start the day shooting at sunrise, return to the hotel for a teaching session, go back out to shoot at sunset, break for dinner, and return to the classroom for time to process the images shot that day and individual critique time. Wednesday evening's session ends with a participant slideshow. Yellowstone was a little different. Since we had to travel by snowcoach, we were in the park shooting all day, returned to the hotel for dinner and then held the classroom sessions at night, usually ending around midnight. Because we had to compress the noon session and evening session into the evenings, we didn't get the individual crit time or the slideshow. Laurie taught photoshop basics, Moose taught some more advanced photoshop and Capture NX which he uses in his workflow. Joe taught us some flash basics and made it look way too easy. Like I said earlier, I learned more from them in a couple of days than I have in a long time of reading books and blogs. I highly recommend their workshops to anyone who loves landscape photography.
What a neat experience. I have enjoyed Moose Peterson's work for some time. His writing on his blog is very nice, and his photos absolutely back up all he has to say.
Re: Yellowstone DLWS Review Part II Scott asked for a little info on cold weather and cameras, so here it is. The camera's all handled the cold perfectly. Both Nikon and Cannon shooters were on the trip, and there were no major problems. One of the Cannon shooters did have a little trouble when we were up at the canyon. The morning we were up there, it was 30 below, and the LCD that shows the exposure values didn't want to update. I assume it was because of the cold. Other than that, there were no camera problems on the trip. Batteries held up great in the cold. I shot about 6 full cards every day, and never got below a half charge on the battery, so I didn't have to get the spare out of my coat pocket. (I shoot RAW on my D2Xs, so a full 8gb card gets me about 350 photos, so 6 cards is about 2100 shots a day) Obviously, condensation was a major concern, but we had so many layers of clothing (more on that later) on that we always kept the heat turned off in the snowcoaches, and sometimes cracked the windows open to keep the temperature inside down. And when we returned to the hotel at night, we had all of the equipment back in the camera bags before we went inside, and when we got to the rooms, we cracked the zippers open to allow the equipment to slowly rise to room temperature before we cleaned our equipment. I was up there a day before the workshop started, and went to the Wolf and Grizzly Center and forgot to crack the zippers when I got back to the room. 4 hours later when I opened the camera bag, the equipment was still very cold, so cracking the zippers a little is very important. We shot while it was snowing one day, and since the cameras had cooled off to the outside temperature before we got out of the snowcoaches, the snow just sat on the camera and didn't melt. We all carried an extra hand towel from the hotel to place over the camera when we weren't shooting, and we used it to dab up any snow that had accumulated when we got back on the snowcoach. In that kind of cold weather, dressing in layers was extremely important. I had underarmor coldgear long underwear, and insulated ski pants on my legs, and underarmor coldgear long-sleeve t-shirt, a regular t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a winter jacket with removable liner on as well. I also had an underarmor hood and a baseball cap for my head. More important than all of that is your boots and gloves. I had boots rated for 25 below, and I had a pair of gloves with the fingers cut out that has a mitten-like flap that you can put over the fingers when you aren't shooting, which I liked because you can feel all of the camera controls when you are shooting and keep your fingers warm when you aren't. The bottom line is that you have to dress in layers in that kind of weather, and if you can function in the cold, your camera will do just fine.
Michael, Thanks again. Those are great tips on how to handle the cold with camera equipment. Never would have thought to crack the zipper either. Good to hear dSLRs keep on working even at 30 below. You got great battery life. I found my D70 battery would only last about 18 hours in below freezing temperatures. I know to wear layers in cold weather but I like how you detailed yours outfit. I've never been in such weather for hours at a time like you did in Yellowstone. Could you give us the make and model of the boots you used? What kind of socks? I got some fleece socks which worked great in Niagara Falls. I discovered those mitten gloves a couple of months ago and use them a lot. Would wear them in Florida after night fall in December and January. And, yeah, I'm still jealous.
The boots were North Face Chilkats. The socks were probably the only mistake I made on the trip. I wore 2 pairs of cotton socks, which were warm enough, but if my feet would have gotten wet, I would have been in trouble because the cotton holds water. Wool socks would have been a much better choice.
