Postcard from Yellowstone — July 26, 2011
It is high summer in Yellowstone. If the calendar and the weather didn’t tell me so, the tourists who blithely abandon their cars and RVs to get a better look at a buffalo (elk , bear, coyote) – in the middle of the road, at the top of a hill, on a blind curve — would suffice as the bellweather indicator species. At the lower elevations, the lovely lush spring greens we experienced for longer than normal thanks to the very wet June, are morphing into the golden hues of August. The hot weather and dry winds of the past few weeks have already sucked all of the green out of the hills just above Gardiner. I already miss those greens of summer – we have them for such a short time. But the high meadows of YNP have exploded into fields of color in an exceptionally good year for flowers. The bad news is that the biting flies and mosquitoes have also exploded into hordes of blood-sucking vampires that make just getting out of the car a TV reality show-worthy-adventure, let alone trying to set up for a macro shot. The stars of the show this week are geraniums, lupines, and the helianthella (little sunflowers) which are draped across the slopes of Mt. Washburn like a gold crown.
The helianthella have peaked but the Coming Attraction: acres and acres of fireweed which are just beginning to open. The slopes above Antelope Creek where the fire burned late last season are going to be quite spectacular. Another season cycles through Yellowstone Time. How does it go by so fast only to return even more quickly? Wishing you could be here.
Postcard from Yellowstone - May 16, 2011
Afternoon drive to Cooke City and back today. It’s trying hard to be spring in Gardiner and Mammoth, thinking about it in the Lamar and still winter in Cooke City. Signs of spring in Gardiner — the lilacs leafed out and sprouted buds over the weekend and in addition to the five thousand finches at the feeder (up from four thousand yesterday) were two white-crowned sparrows. Love those little guys.
Scenes from the Park. Bison and bison babies everywhere from Mammoth to the end of the Lamar. In the road, by the side of the road, out in the Lamar. First pasque flowers are blooming. No sign yet of shooting stars. There’s an osprey in a new nest out in the Lamar. Twenty plus bighorns. Several shaggy looking elk, one growing antlers. Five, count ‘em, five, ruddy ducks at Floating Island Lake. Have never seen more than two there before. The bluest bluebirds ever. One wolf sighting. And one great big beautiful grizzly bear! A perfect day.
And, yes, there would still be snow in Cooke City. A lot of it, although they are in the process of scooping it up and taking it somewhere else. One way or another, time for spring!
(BTW, both pictures are iPhone images. The Cooke City snow is a two-image HDR processed in-camera. Bone Daddy’s is an iPhone painting of a poster on a Cooke City building for your viewing pleasure!)
WaterColors Suite
This is the last weekend for the WaterColors Suite exhibit in the Lightrider Gallery at F11 Photo in Bozeman. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop in and take a look before the show comes down on Monday. The exhibit is a selection of 12 images from the WaterColors project, a book in progress. All were taken within a 48 hour period and with the Tamron 18-270mm VC lens.
If you’re not in the area, here are two links to all of the images in the exhibit.
http://tamron.myphotoexhibits.com/exhibits/287-watercolors-suite
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandranykerk/sets/72157626097381126/
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Day three of four in Yellowstone and both cold and good light have been delivered as hoped for. Thanks for the sun dances – they worked. But in the category of be careful what you wish for, it was -20°F at West Thumb yesterday morning and -27°F this morning at Old Faithful. My fingers won’t work at those temperatures; all four cheeks get frozen; lenses seize and don’t want to zoom; my glasses and the viewfinder are constantly fogged and half of the time I can barely see anything at all; and metal contracts in the extreme cold – causing my favorite tripod to eject its head right over the top of a major snowbank. Fortunately, it was retrievable. It is definitely a challenging photographic undertaking; one which moves photography in the direction of extreme sport. Which I usually do not embrace. Basic survival needs are given the highest priority and you just hope you can manage some creativity in the middle of survival mode.
The reward . . . even though both basins were totally fogged in until late morning, the light at West Thumb was spectacular, and the snow and ice formations beyond incredible. We figure there is at least five feet of snow at West Thumb, more than I can remember in many years. The railings along the boardwalks are completely buried and there are lovely cornices ruffled across the tops. On the edges of the springs, snow feathers inches long cover every surface. All of the trees are coated in hoar frost; the ones that rim the thermal pools have morphed into the classic “ghost trees” of the winter geyser basins. They look like a picture out of a winter fairy tale storybook about the Snow Queen. And now . . . my storybook. I am Queen for a Day.
Alone on the boardwalk, it is utterly quiet until the melodic bell call of a raven rings from the tallest snag and evokes a vision of a choir in the wilderness. Sometimes you just stand motionless in that crystalline cold and suck in your breath in wonder, and cannot believe that you are standing where you are standing and seeing what you are seeing. It is indeed Wonderland, in all senses, winter, white, and otherwise, and images are the extra frosting. The word of the day is gratitude.
RIP Kodachrome: 1935-2010
Back in the old days (there may have still been dinosaurs,) when I first fell in love with the art of photography and purchased my starter camera, it turned out there was really only one color transparency film, in spite of all of the different Kodak boxes lounging in the air-conditioned comfort of the camera store film coolers. Kodachrome was The Film of Choice for 35mm color nature photography, especially for anyone who hoped to compete in the stock market game. The large format nature guys, and yes, they were mostly guys, were shooting Ektachromes. Because their film was so much bigger, they were able to take advantage of the more saturated greens of Ektachrome (yes, each film emulsion had unique color qualities), even though the Ektachromes were actually not as microscopically sharp as the Kodachromes. But bigger was good enough to compensate for any defaults, and so for the comparatively tiny 35mm frame, only the incredible sharpness/acuity, grain, and color rendition of Kodachrome would have any hope of making an editor’s cut on his light table. I’m sorry if you don’t know what a light table is. Look it up. Long before Ektachrome started offering VS film (the VS stood for Very Saturated), long before Velvia was hailed as the best dye emulsion in the history of the known universe, there were the reds of Kodachrome, which flew as the standard against which all other films were judged. As a beginning nature photographer, I soon learned that greens had the best hope standing next to a 4″x5″ Ektachrome if shot with Kodachrome 25. And the reds; well, nothing showcased red like Kodachrome 64.
What? Did I hear a small gasp from those who never threaded a film leader into a takeup spool in the back of a camera and then adjusted the tension to make certain the film was actually moving as it was supposed to? (Back then, even accidental multiple exposures were considered Art.) ISO 25? ISO 64? Yep. Kodachrome was Slow Film designed for Slow Photographers. It’s why I learned to love my tripod and hate the wind within 24 hours of picking up a camera for the first time. With Kodachrome 25 and overcast light, exposures were almost never faster than 1/30th of a second, and more often, 1/2 second or below. Kodachrome 64 was the FAST film, boosting exposures by all of one stop. I spent the first ten years of my photographic explorations with those two films, and felt unbelievably liberated by the introduction of the faster Ektachromes and their acceptance by the editing police. About twice a year I would even be so bold as to handhold a shot, although it was usually a throwaway. Kodachrome 100, 200, and then 400, were introduced, but they had grain, color, and contrast issues, and nothing could touch the smooth tonalities and exquisite sharpness of 25 and 64. They remained the Kings of Kodachrome until Kodachrome 25 was discontinued in 2002; Kodachrome 64 soldiered on alone. But by then most of us had long since been seduced by the saturated tones (some would say oversaturated) and ease of development of Velvia, which was introduced in 1990, and all but the staunchest Kodachrome Loyals would eventually make the move. And, or course, by 2002, digital photography’s star was not just rising, but rocketing like a guided missile straight at those neatly ordered rows of little yellow and green boxes in those unsuspecting camera store film coolers. Without realizing it at the moment, in late 2004 I shot my last roll of Velvia, and I was a latecomer to the digital party. I still have Velvia in the freezer. Along with most transparency film, the fate of Kodachrome was sealed; we just didn’t quite know it yet. But there was already more than one nail in the coffin.
So as 2010 ends, and a photographic era with it, bang the drum slowly to commemorate what Kodachrome 64 was and what it meant to us as photographers. Even if you never even saw or held a box of Kodachrome, it is part of who you are as a photographer. A moment of silence and gratitude, please, for those millions and millions of Kodachrome slides quietly morphing from emulsion into mildew in Carousel trays in closets in every country across the globe. Our histories and memories are in those trays. If one of those closets and some of those trays are yours, make a resolution to rescue those images and get the important ones scanned onto new media. Your mother’s ever-changing hairstyles, your aunt’s laughing face, the way your father’s head tilts toward your little sister, the heavy black lace-up shoes on your great grandmother’s tiny feet, those wild flower prints of 1972, your family vacation in Yellowstone when you were twelve – they are a legacy you can hold in your hands. In your heart. In the nice bright colors of Kodachrome.
And as you welcome the New Year, raise a glass to those greens of summer and all of those Kodachrome red barns and even redder jackets — and invoke the daring hope that all the world could be a sunny day.
Happy New Year and Sunny Days to All . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=3&hp
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/cpq/features/kodachrome.jhtml
