27-SEP-2009
Infinity, Ontario, Canada, 2009
I made this image with a 24mm wideangle lens from a window at the back of a moving train. The tracks converge in the far distance – at a place far beyond our ability to see. With the huge cloud filled sky overhead, and massive forests lining the tracks as they flow without limit, we get a sense of utter infinity – a point in space that seems infinitely distant. It is that sense of endlessness that creates grandeur here. It is an image without bounds.
19-JUN-2009
Mt. Thielson, Diamond Lake, Oregon, 2009
Mount Thielson is a starkly beautiful mountain, rising higher than 9,000 feet. It is also known as the Big Cowhorn, because of its distinctive peak, so extended that it attracts lighting strikes. It is an extinct volcano that stopped erupting 250,000 years ago. Located in the Oregon High Cascades, not far from Crater Lake National Park, Mount Thielson dominates the landscape like few other mountains do. Its huge scale and distinctive shape offer a sense of grandeur that borders on the surreal. I made this image through the windshield of our moving car. I processed it so that the road ahead seems to vanish into darkness, giving even greater prominence to the grandeur of the mountain itself.
11-APR-2009
Rainbow, near Arivaca Junction, Arizona, 2009
A rainbow is a beautiful thing to see anywhere. But when you see one coming out of a storm cloud over a curving road with a magnificent range of sun-splashed hills in the background, it can define grandeur. Such is the case here. Fortunately, the sun was not shining where I was standing, which allows me to shoot from the shadows into the sunny background. Another piece of good fortune was the effect of the rain clouds themselves – hints of color are scattered above and below the rainbow, part of the same optical phenomenon. To increase the panoramic sweep of the setting, I used a 24mm wideangle lens, and found a vantage point that drew the curving lines on the highway directly into the curve of the rainbow itself. And finally, I waited for a car to round the corner, adding a touch of scale incongruity to scene and telling us just how big a landscape we are looking at here.
20-MAR-2009
New York Harbor, New York City, New York, 2009
The Statue of Liberty is among the most iconic of all American subjects. On another kind of day, this wideangle image would be a picture postcard cliché. But on this day, the nasty weather makes the image rich in symbolic power. The billowing dark clouds embrace the statue, harbor, and distant city in the background. The weather symbolizes difficult times, while the statue symbolically opposes the difficulties with the concept of a free society. The rich green patina on the copper clad statue provides a vivid focal point that heightens the sense of majestic grandeur conveyed by this image.
07-OCT-2008
"Between Heaven and Earth." Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2008
Old Faithful is an American icon, the single most famous (and most photographed) feature in Yellowstone. It was the first geyser in the park to receive a name. It erupts every 90 minutes, and sends thousands of gallons of boiling water 150 feet into the sky for several minutes. Erupting geysers are exciting to watch, but difficult to photograph for expressive purposes. This image works as expression because it successfully conveys the grandeur of Old Faithful in terms of its scale, energy, light and color. As I waited for the eruption, I studied the cloud formation overhead, and hoped that the geyser’s column of steam would reach high enough to blend with the clouds. And that is just what is happening here. The thrust of moisture seems to reach the heavens. The play of light on the eruption is critical as well – although Old Faithful erupts every 90 minutes, only the eruptions in the early morning or late afternoon will produce images such as this. The low angle of the late afternoon light, along with my selective spot-metering method, creates different shades and textures of white and gray within the spout, dramatically illuminating its strength and thrust, and truly making Old Faithful seem as impressive in the image as it looks in person.
07-OCT-2008
Dawn on Mount Owen, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 2008
Grandeur can often be implied, rather than shown. In this case, the image shows less and says more. We shot the Tetons at dawn, under heavy cloud cover. We watched the clouds gradually lift, revealing the peaks beneath them. Grand Teton, at far left of the frame, is still obscured, but the sun is already striking the top of one of Mount Owen’s twin peaks. The word “grandeur” means “impressive splendor.” This 13,000 foot high mountain peak is impressive in scale to begin with. Nature simultaneously abstracts it with gilded clouds, while it gradually reveals its glacier-covered face in golden light. I zoomed my telephoto lens only half way out, making this image at about 200mm. By not filling the entire frame with the peak, I am able to include sun-splashed slope as context and neighboring clouds to help make this a larger than life image.
10-OCT-2008
Bull Elk, Gardner River Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2008
Subjects need not always be huge in scale to appear larger than life. In this case, an image of a solitary Bull Elk bugling a mating call in a snowy field can evoke as much grandeur as an image of a huge mountain. We are looking at a dramatic example of nature at work in the animal world – an elk in the process of gathering a harem. It can be heard a mile away. The most frequent and loudest callers attract the most females. I place the elk in the lower right hand part of the frame so that his call will seem to flow diagonally towards the upper left hand corner.
09-OCT-2008
Elk in flight, Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2008
I walked across a vast field towards a bull elk and his harem of ten females. As I drew closer, they spotted me and fled toward the steaming geysers in the distance. There is a sense of grandeur in the sweep of this image. The male elk is on the far right – he directs the flight of his harem by veering towards it. The columns of rising steam tell us we are in Yellowstone and offer a dramatic context. We have two natural processes – the elk mating season and the eruptive geysers – going on simultaneously in this image.
07-OCT-2008
Mount Moran, from Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 2008
By framing Mount Moran horizontally, I stress the flow of the mountain range, and the flaming red trees at its base, as well as the reflection of its glacier in the Snake River below. It is scene of fall splendor. A moment later, I photographed the same scene in a vertical frame (
http://www.pbase.com/image/104715497 ), gathering many more clouds into the frame and making the mountain smaller in the process. These images express their ideas in differing ways – the vertical shot draws the eye from river to sky, while this horizontal shot sweeps across the mountain range, with the trees and reflection at its base. Both images express grandeur, and present a natural scene in a larger than life context
08-OCT-2008
On the boardwalk, Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2008
I used a 28mm wideangle lens turned vertically to make the boardwalk over Yellowstone’s largest hot spring into a symbolic road to the future. The sun is behind the cloud at upper right, backlighting the scene, making silhouettes out of the people and causing the edges of the rain clouds to glow surreally against the lacy clouds behind them. I juxtapose the people with the steam rising from the hot spring, isolating them in space and preventing them from merging into the background. The sheer scale of the scene has impressive grandeur, as it incongruously integrates the worlds of both man and nature.
09-OCT-2008
The summons, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2008
As we were leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, we noticed a solitary bull elk standing on a ridge on the edge of town. It was sounding its mating call again and again, trying to summon a mate as snow flurries changed the green forest in the background to an overlay of soft gray swirls. The elk looks backwards, ready to run, yet is watching and waiting for an answer to its call. Its isolated lofty perch on the hillside implies a sense of haughty grandeur. It must stand alone to win a mate or fight a foe, seemingly unmindful of the coming of night, the cutting wind, or the freezing snow.
12-OCT-2008
Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2008
Temple Square is the epicenter of the Mormon church. Religious subjects are, by their very nature, potentially larger than life. To make them work as expressive photographs, we must be able to convey some kind of spiritual presence. In this case, the massive backlighted clouds looming behind the Mormon spires do just that. The backlighting also abstracts the structures, removing detail, and leaving more to the imagination in the process. By including the foreground layer of spikes (the fence at lower left), I add a sense of depth. A cloud of steam coming from one of the buildings rises between that fence and the Mormon temple, providing additional atmospheric content. All of these elements, when taken together, make this image seem larger than life.