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.

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!)

 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/

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.

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

It’s been seriously snowing in Gardiner since Friday night. So this makes one night, one day, one night, and most of another day. Which means I’ve been doing some serious shoveling and digging out. The last total was 13″ with another 5″ predicted before it’s over. I’m over. It’s the most snow I’ve seen in Gardiner in years, and it really is beautiful to see; just not so beautiful to move around. I was surprised how long it took to tackle the car. I love how the wipers look appropriately like antennae.  At least it’s fairly fluffy snow because the thermometer is working its way down to a predicted low of below zero tomorrow night. I have a feeling I’m going to be suffering by tomorrow and it’s going to need it again in another hour. But the skiers are happy happy and so will be this photographer as soon as I can get up the hill into the park.

No barbecue today!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

I know it’s after the fact, but I have much, much, to share and will do it in several installments. I didn’t expect to like Borrego Springs as much as I did, but Anza Borrego State Park (south of Palm Springs, CA) turned out to be a very interesting place, and for many more reasons than the spectacular desert bloom which occurred while I was there. Borrego Springs and the surrounding areas feature a fascinating assortment of upscale desert heat seekers who are escaping colder climes, day-tripper-flower-peepers making the trek over the mountains from San Diego; an extensive RV community composed of a widely varying demographic, granola hikers in Tevas or Chacos; herds of ATV/ORV/ Jeepers crawling through the canyons or screaming across the sand dunes who view this unique and fragile ecosystem as their personal playground (and who would rather die than put Tevas on their feet); desert rats (who may or may not be wearing a very old beat-up pair of Tevas held together with duct tape); an occasional ecologist/scientist/geologist type; and truly authentic kinda scary (think Ted Kaczynski) end-of-the-roaders. Despite cursory appearances and the mythology of the barren desert wasteland, the Mojave is an amazing ecosystem with even more biodiversity than Yellowstone (if you don’t include the thermophiles), and as just described, the human diversity also ranks right up there in the Guinness Book of World Records. Add fabulous geology, along with some very surreal manmade landscapes, and you have enough visual diversity to keep anyone, photographer or not,  interested for a very long time. Years, even.

So try to picture these - Acres of purple verbena mixed with white desert primrose stretched out along the base of Coyote Mountain. A desert iguana basking atop a volcanic boulder. More acres of desert dandelions painting the desert floor yellow beneath a landscape of blooming ocotillo and Joshua trees. A crumbling 1950s motel with remnants of Pepto pink bathroom tile glowing in the desert light. The absolute and totally dreamlike shimmering vision of the Salton Sea and its surrounding communities. The incongruity of Salvation Mountain, an apparition of both color and bizarro rising from an already bizarre landscape. A circle of delicate yellow blossoms crowning every barrel cactus in sight. A perfectly posed desert bighorn on a rock ridge, exactly impersonating the Northern Pacific mountain goat. The indescribably perfect plumage across the breast of a California quail. The screaming neon pink of blooming hedgehog cactus. A sleek little black BMW with New York plates buried up to its hubcaps in sand two miles in on a 4-wheel-drive-only road (yes, the accompanying humans were also noteworthy). The wide, locked gate to Crazy Fish Ranch festooned with a banner which read, We Support Our Troops, and a large red-white-and-blue decorated plastic hand flipping off I couldn’t figure out exactly what or whom. Me, probably. More than a thousand Guernsey cows standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a huge (and hugely disturbing) feedlot that extended over a mile in each direction in the center of the industrial agricultural complex known as the Imperial Valley. Without a piece of shade anywhere. Think July.  Think Costco beef. The massive Riccardo Brecceda welded-steel sculptures of Pleistocene fauna

(and a few dinosaurs) scattered across the cactus meadows outside of Borrego Springs. Near Ocotillo Wells (which bills itself as the ORV capital of the world), and abutting the “largest gypsum mine and plasterboard plant in the world”, several hundred mostly abandoned RVs and trailers, but a few with obvious signs of life. Two hundred migrating Swainson’s hawks circling in a Velvia-blue-sky-backed kettle just above my head and feeding on flying ants. The barely visible headlights of Jeeps and ORVs flying across the dunes in the last of the light through a massive dust cloud of their own making, exacerbated by 60 mph winds. See what I mean? And I didn’t even yet mention the naked guy I flushed out of a creosote bush in the middle of a dry lake bed. There is indeed much weirdness in the Mojave but I discovered that very little of it has to do with having massive thorns or a long tail, but rather with the possession of two legs.

Traipsing around the desert for three weeks was long enough to acquire a bit of insight into the ecology of this piece of the Mojave, and the affiliated ecological challenges, which are substantial and significant. The BLM’s continuing sacrifice of huge tracts to motorized recreation is accompanied by enormous ecological consequences, and the invasion of the exotic Saharan mustard threatens much of the Mojave, from Anza Boreggo, north to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks. Anza Borreggo is already suffering greatly with large expanses of what was once exclusively covered with wildflowers and native plants now smothered by the incongruous green of horizon-to-horizon mustard. The only place in Henderson Canyon that even begins to look like the verbena-carpeted Henderson Canyon of five years ago is where a group of volunteers pulled the mustard as it was erupting this spring. It is an annual, so one-time pulling is not going to have much impact. The botanists I talked with told me they had no idea how long the seed bank would be viable. Ten years of pulling? Twenty? Fifty? Across maybe 600 square miles? On both public and private lands? In addition to the environmental devastation being wrought by the ORVs? Hang your head and cry.

I was also there long enough to acquire a deep appreciation for the Mojave Desert as Place, which has been developing through my many trips to Death Valley. And finally managing to be there when the desert bloomed - well, I alternately thought I had walked right into Disney’s film, The Living Desert, or a Taos School painting by Dixon or Blumenschein. The subtle juxtaposition of the reds of the chuparosa, the blues of  scorpion weed, and the yellows of the brittlebush, along with the red tips of the ocotillos waving in the ever-present wind, and the blazing pinks of the hedgehogs and beavertail cacti underneath it all, complete with scampering lizards - the shimmering afternoon heat waves transformed everything into an impressionistic piece of art that could be touched and smelled and heard and felt against your skin. And heart. Life as art. I cannot imagine what it is like to be there in August when it is 110°, but on a brilliant blue sky 80°  March day, it was perfection.

So there’s much more to follow, and I hope you’re intrigued. I want to conclude with one of the best things I encountered on this Journey into the Surreal Mojave (right up there with Mr. Naked Guy and desert lilies). One evening I was hanging out at the Visitor’s Center at Anza Borrego, bird watching and just generally observing life in the desert, when a roadrunner did what roadrunners are supposed to do - ran across the road in front of me. But they are usually alone, and this time a second one followed and I thought, Aha, it’s spring - courtship behavior. They stopped just a few yards in front of me and the one that turned out to be the male dived head first into the middle of a creosote bush and emerged with a lizard dangling out of his mouth. Poor lizard, I thought. Lucky Lady Roadrunner. Mr. Male Roadrunner went running up to the female, lizard in his mouth, and I’m thinking, how sweet, he’s going to offer her the lizard and I’m going to get to see the equivalent of “Hey Honey, can I take you to dinner?” At which point, without even asking which restaurant or Oh, is that lizard for little ole me?, the female instantly dips her posterior, Mr. Roadrunner jumps on top, and after about 30 seconds of furious activity on both their parts, he dismounts. They both stand there seeming somewhat dazed, looking at each other for about 5 seconds, when Mr. RR explodes in a full run in the opposite direction, leaving Ms. RR behind in his cartoon dust cloud. And here’s the real point of this story - the poor hapless lizard was STILL dangling out of the roadrunner’s mouth as he disappeared into the desert sunset. I have no idea whether or not Mr. RR ever intended to offer the lizard as inducement, as proof of hunting prowess and virility, as thank-you, or was just momentarily diverted from his evening meal. My last thought as I contemplated what had just transpired in about 75 seconds – is this a perfect metaphor for the male sex or what? And I suppose that the little lizard didn’t survive his role in roadrunner procreation, whatever it was. In the end, he was neither bribe nor token of affection — he was just dinner.

The normal winter wildlife also seems to be somewhere else; no snow-crusted bison, no herds blocking the boardwalks at Old Faithful, no elk along the Firehole. There were, however, the predictable bison herd at Mud Volcano (walking up the boardwalk), a sleek and graceful otter at Alum Creek, and a lovely fat beaver at Otter Creek. And a few very fluffy coyotes.

But here’s the thing . . . even when not at its photographic best, Yellowstone still never ceases to delight and amaze and any trip into the interior in winter is both spectacular and surprising. The snow feathers on the trees at Beryl Springs and along the boardwalk by Black Pool at West Thumb were worth the trip all by themselves. Or the ice crystals that had grown between two pieces of grass into a cone shape that looked just like a popsicle. Or the constantly shapeshifting steam in the thermal areas which first hides and then momentarily reveals a perfect snow-laden ghost tree. It’s all perfect.

At least for now.  Current summer forecast is for smoke.

So there has been very little photography for the past few months and instead of being productive in the field, I have spent way too much time in the front of the computer processing and printing. Time spent trolling Flickr was very rewarding in that it turned up both inspiration and tutorials for techniques I have been trying to perfect. Love that Flickr. Look for more abstracts coming soon!

The printing was for a show which is currently hanging in the Lightwriter Gallery space at F11 in Bozeman titled Digital Photographic Alchemy – a variety of subjects processed with varying degrees of HDR and tonemapping techniques. The exhibit will be up through the month of February, so if you’re in Bozeman, stop by and take a look. I put the images into a set on Flickr which is here. And let me know what you think!

Dates for workshops for 2010 are being finalized. Check out the schedule at sandranykerk.com.