Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Grand Teton National Park: Afternoon At Jenny Lake

Afternoon At Jenny Lake
Grand Teton National Park.  Wyoming.  August 3, 2014.
www.aflitt.com/GrandTetonNP
Copyright © 2016 A. F. Litt, All Rights Reserved


Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: Day of Several Photos - July 20, 2016


I was going to write about how afternoons are the worst at this park for photography, but I covered that in my first post on the Tetons.  It's late and I don't have much thought left in me today.  I wanted to get through many more photos than I did, at least, spread out around more parks, but I got everything I have out for Scotts Bluff National Monument and Chimney Rock National Historic Site.

My focus on National Parks this summer is largely inspired by this being the centennial of the National Park Service.  If I had the chance to plan ahead a bit more, my spring trip through the southwest might have turned into an across the country expedition to photograph as many parks as I could have...  Something like what the guys at 59in59.com are doing, though I'd include as many of the monuments, historic sites, recreation areas, etc. as I could, too.  In fact, while the big name national parks have their reputations for a reason, they also have the crowds and are well known already...  My heart is drawn more towards the lesser know places, the quieter spaces...  

Speaking of the 59 in 59 guys, we pretty much crossed paths in Utah this spring.  I even thought about trying to contact them to meet up, but that trip was more about isolation and self-exploration.  And even being on the road for nearly a month, I still barely had the time to visit everywhere I wanted to visit and to shoot and film everything I wanted to capture.

That trip, this spring, was a lot different than this family vacation in 2014.  That trip was dedicated to photography.  While I took a lot of photos on the 2014 trip, it was all on the fly as we tried to see as much as we could in the time we had available.  Because of that, at times, my photos were rushed, and the timing was not always optimal for the subjects I was wanting to shoot.  While I think a lot of the shots I've been posting this week were nice, many of the locations don't have the "wow" shots that I would like to have captured if I had a little more time, and a little more attention to pay to the work.  
However, visiting the sorts of spectacular places that we were visiting that summer, in many of the locations, the scenery provided as long as I didn't mess up the camera on my end.  I joke from time to time that, in places like Grand Teton National Park, photography is easy.  You can pretty much just randomly point the camera over your shoulder and walk away with a spectacular photograph.

In this shot, I am not absolutely sure which mountains are pictured...  Cascade Canyon is the main canyon on the right, and I believe that is Hanging Canyon in the center between the peaks...  So, I think this is all part of Mt. St. John, with Storm Point and Symmetry Spire being the two peaks, from left to right, rising between Cascade Canyon and Hanging Canyon.  However, I am not certain.  I should have taken a photo of a peak finder at the overlook, a practice I have since adopted.

According to Wikipedia, the lake is 423 feet deep, 1,191 acres, and "is named after a Shoshone Indian woman who married an Englishman, Richard 'Beaver Dick' Leigh," She and her six children died of Smallpox in 1876.

Links


NPS - Centennial
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/centennial/index.htm

NPS - Grand Teton National Park
https://www.nps.gov/grte/index.htm

Wikipedia

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