Post 7: Yellowstone Photography Trip

This past week I had time off from classes and decided to take advantage of the time and go to Yellowstone for a photography trip. It was most definitely an adventure, to say the least. I went with a friend, for a simple day trip. We wanted to take advantage of the beauty that covers the entire state of Montana, so we decided to take the back roads from Billings and Yellowstone. Many of the roads that we took were made of gravel and dirt. While this meant that we had to drive slow, doubling our time, it also meant that we had prime opportunities to photograph many scenes that are far out of the eyes of the general public. We stopped about once every 30 minutes, or whenever we came across a scene or an animal that we could simply not resist the urge to stop and photograph. I hope that there will never come a time where my breath is not taken away from the beautiful mountains, streams, lakes, geysers, clouds, grass fields, animals, and of all the things that make up big sky country. The journey was great and very rewarding since we came across many scenes that allowed for some remarkable photographs. Unfortunately due to the gravel and dirt roads, I ended up getting a flat tire as we were pulling into Livingston. It looked like for a while that we would not actually make it to Yellowstone, but after about an hour of trying to fix my tire myself we took my car to a tire shop and within 20 minutes my tire was patched and we were back on the road to Yellowstone. Crisis averted we began to enjoy our road trip again, spotting other scenes to photograph and talked about the wildlife we wanted to try and photograph in the park. My friend really wanted to photograph some swans because many flocks of swans had just been released into the park to try and bring the population within the park back to what it used to be. I was hoping to get some photographs of a bull elk, bison, and of course, we both had our fingers crossed that we would come across a bear. I did end up getting my photos elk, as well as a photo of a hawk, and my friend got photos of elk and goats. We did come across a swan, but it was too far away for either of us to capture it with the equipment that we brought. I was traveling with my tripod, my T6 rebel canon camera, and my EFS 18-55mm lens. I also brought along two SD cards: one 16GB and 32GB. Due to the fact that we spent so much of the day on the back roads to get to Yellowstone, we did not get to go very far into Yellowstone, and we did not get to spend very much time there. Overall the trip was a lot of fun, but looking back at it from a photographer’s perspective I think I would have extended the trip from one day to 3.5 days. I would not change us taking the back roads to get to Yellowstone because those were beautiful, but I would have taken an entire day to allow us time to get there and to fully enjoy the Montana landscapes. I would then spend the next two days photographing in the park, and scoping out locations for photographs, then spend the last half of a day getting back to Billings. I would have also planned the trip for a time when the weather was a little better if I could go back and redo the trip.