Bastion of Spring
Despite the fact that it’s been cold and rainy here in Montana for most of this spring, a few perfect days have shown their face and the landscape is fully alive with color…so color it is. I have to give part of the credit for this image to my buddy, Jay Wesler, and here’s the long version of why. He and I grew up together and after both leaving our little town for the city, we each found our way home again. We share the same passion for landscape photography and have spent many, many days shooting the far corners of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona together. Naturally, we have a lot of very similar images. This hasn’t ever bothered us personally, but there’s something to be said about having a unique portfolio and knowing that shots are truly ‘yours’. Lately we’ve been a bit more reserved about redundancy between us for this very reason, but it hasn’t dampened the joy of being out adventuring around…we still hit the dirt roads we’re so fond of as often as possible.
So, on the day this photo was taken, Jay saw the scene and called it outright, which was perfect. It’s a ‘Jay Shot’ if there ever was one. While he was on one side of the road doing his thing, I was on the other photographing an old Bristlecone on a ridge against some clouds, then returned to the car to wait for him to finish up. After a few minutes he showed up and insisted that I come shoot his scene. I hesitated, comfortable respecting the space we’d decided to give each other in this exact situation. But again he insisted…and I had to oblige. What a beautiful sight this was! Just as I began to shoot this angle, a cloud cast its shadow along the top of the visible ridge and down into the small bramble. For another 10 minutes or so we walked and kneeled among the flowers, working the hillside in wonder. Jay and I simply call days like this “Good Times” because we know that when we’re old men we’ll look back on them for exactly what they were…
A lovely photo Cody. I just want to say you tell the best stories! It takes a special kind of friendship to be able to spend hours and hours out shooting, hiking and scouting shots. It has to be one based on similar interests, to start with, but also of patience, respect, generosity, laughs….and did I say patience.
Thanks for sharing “the long version”, what a great friendship!
Sorry for my absence, but thank you for your kind words, Diane. I’m fortunate to have Jay around these parts…it would be some lonely adventuring without him, and a bit more dangerous considering the types of places we like to visit. I hope our outings continue for many more years with better and better captures. I’ll keep posting them as they come in…
Hi Cody, I’m just curious what type of tripod you like to travel with?
Hey there, Diane. Tough question, actually. I’ve owned several tripods, most of them were junk. When traveling by car, size doesn’t really matter. By plane, only if it won’t fit in a piece of luggage…but that was before airline restrictions on how many bags you can take with you. So, it comes down to size and space. If I’m going somewhere like Europe, I just buy a small tripod when I get there, something cheap and essentially disposable. The last time I went I picked up a EuroActiv EA-550 for about $35 or something. At about 18″ tall, it fit nicely into my daypack for treks around the cities and landscapes.
But if you’re traveling by car and size isn’t an issue, I really suggest getting something a bit more expensive because it’ll be worth its weight in gold over the long run. I currently use a Manfrotto 458B tripod with the 486 Compact ball head mount. I previously used the very slick 322RC2 Grip Action mount, but it’s pretty big and adds unnecessary weight for hiking. So, the tripod setup is pretty big overall, I’m not really sure how much it weighs total, but I definitely feel it when I take it out on overnight camping trips. The trade-off is that I’ve beat my poor tripod to death since day one and it still performs like a charm. Before this one, I broke several aluminum-and-plastic jobbers a year…
Hope that helps.
Oh what a difference a gray makes
Looks very much better than in my Google Reader. Cody, I love this image, but I’m not sure about those bushes. They don’t separate enough - I would take them out.
Btw: you have so many images with cloud shadows advancing, how do you do that? Do you wait in a certain place until it happens? Or is this simply the way it is in Montana?
Here in Austria clouds are normally high up in the sky. That’s for all those high mountains. I suppose that in an environment with mostly rolling hills they come much lower, just like at sea. Is it that?
Andreas
Hey Andreas. Thank you for the comment and critique!
To be honest, I don’t alter my images beyond the means of a traditional darkroom. I’ll sometimes blur slightly around the edges, but beyond that it’s as close to traditional as possible. Dodge, burn and maybe a microsharpen on my low resolution .jpegs if necessary. I’ve been known to pop saturation a few points at times to bring back the vibrancy of a scene that was somehow lost or misinterpreted by the camera (white balance, underexposure, etc.) But I follow a pretty strict set of rules on how I process my images - I’m a stickler for tradition, even in the digital age. I don’t remove elements via Photoshop or ‘clone stamp’ or anything like that. What you see in my photos is exactly how the landscape or subject(s) appeared before me when I snapped the shutter. The basic principles upon which I produce my work prohibit me from doctoring a scene to be more appealing…such as the bushes that you mentioned. I have this same shot without the shadow bridging the gap and the bushes are definitely a stronger element in that capture. But there’s something about that shadow making its entrance over the crest of the hill. I just couldn’t resist… 
As for the clouds and their shadows, I think it’s a geographical thing. The clouds in this part of Montana are pretty unique. We’re nestled between 3 major mountain ranges that are essentially isolated from each other and are laid out at different angles. This causes some crazy weather patterns…like snow for 15 minutes, then 55°F a few minutes later. As a matter of fact, it snowed here YESTERDAY. Crazy. So, I think it’s that we have lots of crazy clouds, the elevation definitely plays a part in it because they’re typically very low, but also the wind. Serious winds in these parts - a major jet stream actually touches down on some flats about 5 miles from my house. All of these elements combined make for lots of moving, independent shadows that race across the landscape. I definitely wait for “edge light” to maximize effect in my images, but sometimes it just happens by accident, which was the case with this photo.
Hope you don’t mind the long comment, you just got me to thinkin’… Ahoy!
Yeah, thought so. I won’t suggest tinkering with content any more. Promised
It’s only that we are so different in how we work. I do get a good deal of satisfaction exactly out of post-processing. A recent blog entry ( http://blog.andreas-manessinger.info/2008/06/607-let-there-be-more-light.html ) had an image with 14 layers, where I did cloning, re-lighting, color manipulations of all kinds, in other words: everything thinkable, and I enjoyed working on the image. Sometimes that mindset carries me away ;D
Andreas
I enjoy tinkering too, don’t get me wrong. The tools within Photoshop are amazingly powerful and I also use them…I just do it with my graphic design work instead of my images. I’ve been impressed several times with your post-production and how you often detail the process, especially your posts #542, #571 and the related #574. I don’t look at your techniques or mine as one being better than the other, it’s all just an attempt by us humans to share how we see and visualize the world around us. It’s working for you, Andreas, I say keep it up! Thanks for your reply.
[...] likely recognize the scene from today’s shot, but I decided to give the 3D action a little whirl. Neil Creek got me [...]