High Plains Drifter

Sunday 9/24 proved to be spectacular today at Grand Teton NP.  A low fog bank prevailed at sunrise over the adjacent lakes just east of the Teton range.  This allowed for dramatic photography opportunities throughout the morning…as the fog lifted and became a thin veil of stratus cloud.  Wow!  There are some old barns/farmsteads on the National Park property that photographers can go up to to use as foreground elements… and with the thin stratus veil, dramatic images were a result.  I took advantage of this during the mid-morning hours.  These old farmsteads are in an area called "Mormon Row" in the southeast section of the park.  For midday and afternoon, I went on the same hike as yesterday, since the wind was much calmer, allowing for smoother water on Leigh Lake and String Lake.  The water is really clear, which allows smooth rocks and some driftwood for foreground elements in a lot of my mountainscape shots.  Remnants of the morning fog were now just small little clumps of cumulus near the summit of the higher peaks, like Grand Teton and Mount Moran.  For sunset, I went to the Snake River Overlook, and the photography here wasn’t as good as this morning and afternoon’s shoot.  Since you are facing the direction of the sun at sunset, clear skies actually create more of a bland mood, unlike yesterday when the sunset photography was great with pink/violet hues in remaining cumulus cloud clumps.  There were no clumps of cumulus left for sunset this evening, so I ended my photography about 45 minutes earlier than yesterday.  Tomorrow is Monday, and I will be getting up very early again for a sunrise shoot.  I will spend a majority of the morning in the park in hopes of getting a few more shots I want to get… then by midday, I’ll begin my trek back to Dodge City.  It will be back to the grindstone Tuesday evening.  I have a solid 2000 raw images downloaded to my laptop here over the past 10 days.  This will certainly be a fall project that will keep me busy — prioritizing and processing all these images.  Whew, what an awesome trip!