Fall colours

I enjoy the colours that happen around this time of year, who doesn’t ? I have not had a lot of time to shoot this season but here are a few random images from the surrounding area.

Some thoughts on Yellowstone

Yellowstone is an amazing place with very stark contrasts. The thing that struck me at first is the disneyland style tourist infrastructure around the famous sights. There are thousands of people moving through the main arteries of the park creating an iPad traffic jam whenever a deer or bison is near the road. I find it more than a little sad that many don’t even have the desire to leave the confines of their cars in order to get a better shot of whatever it is they are seeing. Yellowstone seems to be the ultimate nature drive through destination, very much like this video clip.

The other parts of the park, the less frequented trails, are some of the most serene places I have been to. They are a welcome contrast to the tourist crowds that congregate near the roads and create a theme park atmosphere which often kills the mood of this truly magnificent place.

On route through Wyoming

The hotel I was due to stay at in Estes park Colorado got flooded and the area has been evacuated. I’m currently on the way to Montana, west of Yellowstone. The 1200km or so journey through Wyoming I’m currently in the middle of has so far taken me though some of the most barren and uninhabited landscapes yet; thousands of square miles of dried grassland as far as the eye can see. The occasional cow, horse or herd of deer is a welcome sight.

Brief stop in Colorado

I have not updated this blog in a few months and apologize to those who have e-mailed me questions for the slow replies. Summer in the the city is one of the most depressing states of existance a person who loves the great outdoors can find themselves in. The urge to take pictures greatly diminishes as a result as well.

I’m writing this from Colorado where despite the big flooding problem in many areas, the mountains and humbling wilderness can heal all the wounds inflicted by city life.

The intense cold and brief storm I have experienced yesterday at 14,000+ feet felt more real, and certainly more honest than anything I have experienced in civilization in a long time. It has also reminded me of this passage from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

-George Gordon Byron

First colours of spring

Some weekend images of the local spring.