Jansen Gunderson Landscape Photography

I recently made a photography trip to Yellowstone National Park. Access to the park in the winter time is much different from that of the summer. Camping is somewhat difficult and only two lodges in the park remain open in the Winter: Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Access to Old Faithful Snow Lodge must be done by either a guided snowmobile tour or by snow coach. We hired a snow coach departing from Flagg Ranch at the southern entrance to the park and spent a few days touring the park on skis, rather than by the controversial snowmobiles. It was the last weekend of the Winter season and the park was eerily vacant. We watched the Old Faithful Geyser erupt and there weren’t any other people around; quite the opposite from the crowded summer months. The weather turned out to not be quite ideal for photography yet I am quite happy with the few pictures I did make. Below is a photograph of Castle Geyser, located on the boardwalk in the Firehole River Geyser Basin, near Old Faithful. Fujichrome Provia 100F, 4×5, f/32 for 3″. More photos on Wyoming Landscape Photography.

I have compiled a small portfolio of photographs taken this past winter in Wyoming. This Winterscapes portfolio is comprised of photographs taken with 4×5 inch large format film and 6×4.5 centimeter medium format film. I am also working on transitioning my other portfolios to some new web exhibit software Matt Magruder turned me onto called Indexhibit. The image below is titled Ice Cave and was taken last month in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming.

I have added some additional photographs to Wyoming Landscape Photography. Some of which I have been sitting on for some time not being able to decide whether or not they fit into this particular project. I went ahead and added them anyway as I feel like they are indeed representative of the Wyoming Landscape and deserve to be part of the Wyoming Revealed Project. The “new” images include: Granite and Lichen, Dinwoody Basin, and Continental Peak (as shown below).

Below is the image I promised from my last post. I’ve been working with this particular Grand Teton Photograph for a few days and I think I’ve finally arrived at a consensus for how it should appear. I have shunned the current high dynamic range trend with this image and left the foreground in a deep shadow. Though I did indeed use a 2 stop graduated neutral density filter to make this photograph, the foreground, I felt, was competing with the sunlit peaks of the Tetons and so I decided to burn it in some. See the full size version of Teton Winter Sunrise.

I visited a rather unknown section of Wyoming known as the Sweetwater Domes. The Sweetwater River, with its headwaters in the Wind River mountain range runs just south of these large granitic domes. A brief snowstorm passed through in the evening and I made this photograph of Lone Mountain just as it was clearing and the sun was setting. A more detailed description here at Wyoming Landscape Photography.

It has been quite some time since my last post, which seems to be my M.O. Anyway, summer has finally led way to Autumn here in the Tetons and I am getting more time out photographing. Also, the new website for the photography project is finished and I invite you all to take a look at my Wyoming Landscape Photography Project. The project is tentatively titled “Wyoming Revealed” and I feel like it is going quite well. Any questions or suggestions are appreciated.

I made a short overnight trek up the Middle Teton via Garnet Canyon in Grand Teton National Park. Instead of hauling the large format equipment I brought a Canon 10d digital camera and Kaidan QuickPan panoramic head and the Mamiya 645AF medium format camera. The reason for the 10d was to take a 360 degree panorama on top of the Middle Teton for VirtualJacksonHole.com. The Mamiya is nearly as heavy as the large format system so in retrospect, I probably should have just hauled the large format camera up. Below are a few images I made during the trip.

Spaulding Falls and the Middle Teton, Sunrise.

Grand Teton as seen from the Middle Teton

All of the research and airborne reconnasance paid off as we were able to have a very successful trip. We used ATVs to cover the larger distances on the few roads which crisscross the Red Desert; then it was on foot as much of the area is contained within wilderness study areas. We stayed mainly in the northern section of the Red Desert around the Oregon Buttes, Continental Peak and Honeycomb Buttes. The Killpecker Dunes and Boar’s Tusk will have to wait for another time. As I showed in my last post, a sunset photograph of the Oregon Buttes wasn’t ideal, however a sunrise photograph was, as shown below:

Though quite spectacular in their varied colors, the Honeycomb Buttes texture demands a black and white treatment as shown below. Fujichrome Provia is an excellent film for color to black and white conversions due it not being as contrasty as Velvia. I’m glad to have made the switch to Provia.

To plan for the Red Desert photography expedition we took a flight over the red desert to check out some potential landscape subjects. Areas of particular interest included the Oregon Buttes, Continental Peak, the Honeycomb Buttes, Killpecker Sand Dunes and the Boar’s Tusk. After the flight I was able to consult National Geographic Topo! and Google Earth as well as the LargeFormatPhotography.info Sun and Moon Calculator to determine optimal subjects for evening/morning light. For instance, the image below is of the Oregon Buttes, looking south east. I’m very much interested in photographing the buttes but would like to know exactly where the sun will be illuminating them at any given time and what other landforms might potentially obscure the sunlight from hitting the buttes.

Locating the coordinates on Topo! I am able to determine the azimuth of the sun at sunset and predetermine weather this will be a potentially good photograph of the prominent southern butte.

From the topo I can tell that the buttes to the north west will be obscuring the sun on a large portion of the southern butte so this may not be the ideal subject to photograph. A quick check in Google Earth affirms this.

So I’ll have to look at other potential subjects.

I’m all settled in here in Wilson, Wyoming. The snow is starting to melt and there is an abundance of mud. The weather has been hit or miss but I’ve managed to get out and take a few pictures. I made the Receding Snow picture up on Togwotee pass. I was hoping for something much more grandiose like a sunset photo of the Pinnacle Buttes but the clouds had something else in mind. I’m rather pleased with how this photo turned out as it alludes to the changing seasons which is similar to the events in my life at this time.