I think we all have memories of the first time we make it to places that we’ve wanted to visit for years. Sometimes the reality of a place doesn’t live up to the way we’ve built it up in our minds. Sometimes reality matches vision. And sometimes, though rarely, reality surpasses anything we could have dreamed of. Yellowstone National Park falls into this last category for me.
Canon EOS 10D, Canon EF 300mm f2.8L IS
This is a photo of an elk in velvet just inside the West Entrance to Yellowstone National Park taken on my first drive into the park in July of 2004. I had dreamed of going to Yellowstone for years prior to this trip. I had seen photographs from other photographers, read articles in magazines, watched documentaries and more. It seemed like a magical place and it was within a day’s drive of Denver. When an opportunity came in 2004 to visit the place, I jumped at the chance.
While all of the pictures, movies, articles and everything I had read had prepared me for what I would see, it’s one of those places that needs to be experienced. The Grand Canyon is probably the epitome of this effect. No reproducible medium will ever do justice to being able to stand on the edge and just look at how big and magnificent it is.
There are a few aspects of why I feel this way about Yellowstone. One is the physical experience factor. For example, watching a video of a geyser eruption doesn’t do justice to being there in person to witness it. There are intangibles like the smell of sulfur in the air that are missing from video. Additionally, one needs to have a sense of space and scale and three dimensionality that video just can’t reproduce.
Additionally, one needs to be at the place just to appreciate how big it is and how diverse it is. Going to the Yellowstone/Grand Teton area may only include visits to two National Parks but it seems like many more than that. The geyser basins are very different from the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone which is very different from Mammoth Terrace which is very different from the Tetons and on and on. Couple in the abundance and diversity of the flora and fauna and differences of season and weather at these parks and one can always find something new and different to see.
While this photo is a nice one of an elk that I’m certainly happy with, it has a much deeper personal meaning for me as one of the first photos I took in a place that has become one of my favorite on the planet.
2 Comments
I get this. There are a bunch of my favorite photographs that have a backstory that make them special. In many cases the photos themselves are, on their own, not truly great. You have to know the backstory.
Sometimes a picture can stand on its own without input. I knew a photographer once that refused to give any caption information whenever he had prints hanging in galleries because that sullied his intentions for his work. I’ve always found that adding at least a bit of basic information made pictures even more interesting, even if a bit less mysterious. That’s especially true with shots that have personal meaning for the photographer. Knowing back stories makes things a lot more interesting for me.