January 15, 2013
The Tetons and Moose in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

I'm on my way from Grand Teton National Park to Yellowstone National Park. This is a bit complicated in the winter because only the North Entrance to Yellowstone, up near Gardiner, Montana, is open in the winter. Add to that a trailer ban on WY-22, the shortcut out of Jackson, and I had to go almost all the way to Idaho Falls on my way up to Bozeman. It's been a beautiful, though wintery, drive. I made this image of the Teton Range at dawn yesterday. While it doesn't have over-the-top colorful clouds, it is very effective at capturing my perspective — if I do say so myself. The centerpiece of the Teton Range is Grand Teton at 13,770 ft (4197m), the tallest peak in this image. While that's an impressive height, what makes the range so spectacular is the 7000 ft (2155m) vertical rise from the approximately 6700 ft (2042m) planes of Jackson Hole. (Most tall mountains are surrounded by other tall mountains and don't have much visible rise.) The planes of Jackson Hole are vast, and by finding an area that was mostly snow with very little sagebrush, and by using a wide-angle lens, I was able to convey that vastness. While I generally don't like blue snow in an image, I left the cool color temperature because the snow on the peaks is about the right color. Plus, it was a cold -15°F (-26°C) when I made the image. The blue also reminded me that while the location is spectacular, it's only one small corner of the Earth, that tiny blue dot that orbits an average yellow sun in an average galaxy in a universe that contains millions of galaxies. Shortly after I made the image above, a moose cow and calf followed me for about 40 minutes. Let me explain. I came upon the moose near the main highway in the park, US-89, which runs roughly northeast and southwest. They were on the west side of the highway heading southwest — perfect lighting conditions. I set up to photograph them from the car, and when they came too close I backed up and shot some more. I continued doing this until they decided to cross the road. While I got some nice images early on, and it would have been easy to leave them, I stuck with them until they decided to leave, and this image was taken near the end of our encounter.

It's mornings like these that make my life as a nature photographer so rewarding. Highlights from my previous career as an aerospace engineer, winning a government contract or getting a complicated computer code to work, pale in comparison.

May you also find something in your life that provides deep fulfillment.