Autumn Moonset, Oxbow Bend, Grand Tetons
Sony a7R III
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 200
f/11
1/6 second
Way back when I started getting into photography as a hobby, my subject selection criteria were pretty basic: is it visually appealing, and can I get there relatively easily? This worked well enough, because the world is full of relatively appealing subjects that are relatively easy to get to, and I was content with merely pretty pictures.
But my decision more than 20 years ago to elevate my serious photography hobby into my actual food-on-table livelihood meant I had much more at stake, and merely pretty pictures would no longer cut it. For starters, choosing my subjects could no longer prioritize convenience. To that point I’d had some success concentrating on under-appreciated beauty in everyday natural elements like flowers and trees, but I also wanted to pursue the more heralded scenes that draw gawkers (and photographers) from around the world (like Yosemite), and knew I’d need to do something to distinguish my images from others’.
I started studying the work of other landscape photographers I admired, and soon realized that most successful images of familiar subjects include something extra that sets them apart from the millions of other beautiful images that preceded them. In other words, to up my photography game enough to pay the bills, I too would need to seek that extra something to distinguish my own images of popular photographic icons. And while that realization alone didn’t spawn instant success, it was an important insight that guided me as I honed my craft and sought subjects.
So, armed with new motivation, after choosing a primary subject, I wouldn’t attempt to photograph it until I could identify an ephemeral element that would (I hoped) set my image apart. Rarely, that extra something might be a beautiful sunset or dramatic light, but I really wanted to match my target subject with something more special, and soon found that this process became much easier when I sought to include things that move me personally.
This helped me understand that a photographer’s best path to creative success is to concentrate on the scenes that cause a reflexive, “Oooh, look at that!,” when sharing time in Nature with a loved one. For me, that long list includes (in no particular order) things like rainbows, reflections, lightning, the Milky Way, and the moon.
Not only do these ephemeral gifts from Nature have the ability to elevate a scene from (merely) beautiful to truly special, each resonates with me personally. Instead of being a chore to pursue, the extra effort, no matter how extra, that’s necessary to incorporate them into already beautiful scenes actually becomes part of the appeal and is never a burden.
One of my very first pursuits was the moon, whose phase and position could be timed with mathematical precision. Soon I was targeting iconic subjects, or identifying striking (but anonymous) landscape features near home, doing the calculations (in the days before computer or smartphone apps could do it for me), and traveling to photograph the convergence. And even if the goal of a trip wasn’t the moon, I’d never visit a location without knowing the moon’s phase and when and where it would appear.
In 2018 I was assisting Don Smith with his annual autumn Grand Tetons workshop. I’d been to the Tetons a few times, mostly with Don, and find the entire park absolutely spectacular, but hadn’t really spent enough time there to make images that really excited me. But this year, at some point before my departure, I checked the moon and discovered that it would be full during the workshop. With a little plotting, I found that from Oxbow Bend we’d be able to align it perfectly with the Tetons and Mt. Moran at sunrise on one particular morning. Since this trip is always timed for peak fall color, the full moon was just a fortuitous confluence, but I was absolutely going to take full advantage.
Speaking of fortuitous confluences, when we got the group out there on the appointed morning, not only did we find the moon in place as expected, we had peak fall color, a reflection, a thin sheet of fog hovering above the water, and another layer of low clouds beneath the peaks.
I don’t really remember a lot of specifics from that morning, but I do remember that there were a lot of people (no surprise). Fortunately, there’s also a lot of room to spread out, and I took full advantage, moving up and down the riverbank to set the moon’s position relative to Mt. Moran and the other peaks. This image came about 15 minutes before sunrise, not long after the foreground had brightened enough to enable me to get detail in the moon and the landscape. (As always, it’s a single click, not a composite.)
I love this image, but believe it or not, I only just processed it 4 days ago. I think what happened was that I had just returned from my Hawaii workshop before doing a quick turnaround for the Tetons, then immediately after returning from there, headed off for my Eastern Sierra workshop. Since I usually prioritize the images from my own workshops, and I was suddenly buried with those, the Teton images just fell off my radar. But a couple of weeks ago, someone else from that workshop posted their own image from that morning (thanks, Bernie!), and my first reaction was, “Holy crap, that’s beautiful!” And then it dawned on me that I was there too—so on the 15-hour San Francisco to Sydney leg of my New Zealand flight, I pulled it up, processed it, and here it is.
Something Extra
