Our last full day in the valley was a beautiful one. We had plans to go whitewater rafting on the Snake River and do some final shooting in the park. We woke up to some thick fog and a cool temperature. Not the greatest weather for a raft trip, but by 10:00 the bright sun had burnt the fog off and nothing but deep blue sky remained. This has been a particularly wet spring in the Tetons, and the rivers are incredibly high, not to mention very cold. The temperature of the Snake was only 44 degrees! We were all required to wear wet suits, as you can see in the photo, to help stay warm. No matter what you were wearing, when that water splashed you it was a frigid wake up call. If it wasn't for the sun I think we all would of been blocks of ice by the end of the trip. The biggest rapid on the river was Lunch Counter, which is a class 4 rapid. The waves were far larger than I can ever remember, and we had a wild ride. By the time we got through it everyone on the boat was soaked and screaming with delight. We forgot about how cold we were for just a few seconds.

The students had most of the afternoon off to finish up any last minute shopping and pack their bags. Then at 6:00 we went to a final group dinner in town at a restaurant called Sidewinder's. After dinner, a group of us headed out on the National Elk Refuge just outside town to catch the sunset from a bluff above the valley called Curtis Canyon Overlook. The overlook is one of the best views of the area with the Teton range in clear view across the stream filled valley floor. We were treated with a beautiful sunset and lingered on the bluff until well after dark.

When we got back to the cabins, the students surprised John and I with a framed picture of our rafting trip and a nice thank you card signed by everyone. It felt great to know how much they appreciated all the hard work and energy we had put into the workshop. We ate some delicious campfire smores and laughed and joked until after midnight, cherishing our last few moments in the vallery, and ignoring the early wake up call on Sunday morning to head back home.

On Friday morning we woke up at 4:30 am for one last sunrise shoot. John and I stepped outside the cabin to gauge the weather. It was dark and cold, and there were no stars visible. We also couldn't make out the silhouette of the mountains. It didn't look promising, but amazingly there were students walking towards the van at 4:45 am ready to go. We were up, so we decided to go for it. Unfortunately, the light never really broke through the clouds, and after an hour or so it started to rain. We headed back to the cabins and decided it would be a good day to get some serious work done in the studio. From 9:00 am to nearly 9:00 pm we worked in the studio editing and backing up our images and making some final prints.

By the time we were done, the light had broken through the heavy clouds and painted the mountains in dramatic shades of pinks and purples. We decided to run up to the park and try to catch a few minutes of the remaining light. We headed to Mormon Row, which is a series of old homesteads and cabins from some of the first settlers in the region. The structures have been moderately maintained over the years by the park service. The images above are a couple of long exposures from the area. The exposures were several minutes long, which records the motion of the clouds. I also used a portable flash and light to illuminate the cabins and freeze the students in various poses.

On Thursday morning we held a studio session from 8:00 to noon. Then we headed to the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for a ride up the new 32 million dollar tram. The tram takes you up over 4,000 vertical feet in 8 minutes to the top of Rendevous Mountain at close to 11,000 feet. This is the major ski resort in the area, and one of the best in the world. The air was thin and cool at the top, and there was lots of snow still around. We had fun throwing snowballs at John who was trying to take our group portrait. We spent almost 2 hours at the top just exploring the high alpine landscape and breathtaking 360 degree views. You can see seven different mountain ranges from the peak.

We were all very hungry after traipsing around for a few hours at 11,000 feet and headed to Nora's Fish Creek Inn in nearby Wilson, Wyoming for a group dinner. The tasty buffalo burgers were a popular choice.

In the evening, we had a visiting artist presentation by Jon Stuart, Director of the Photography Program at the Center for the Arts. Jon has a long history in the field, including being an assistant to Ansel Adams, and running his own camera store for over 10 years. He shared prints from a couple of different bodies of work and talked about his motivations as an artist. The students had lots of questions about technique and process, and it was nice to hear him say in the end that it wasn't the equipment, but the vision that makes a photographer successful.

Wednesday was a beautiful day in the valley. It was the warmest day yet, and no clouds in sight. We loaded up the van around 9:00 am and headed to Granite Hot Springs. The natural hot springs are around 30 miles south of Jackson and well worth the trip. You drive through the beautiful Hoback River canyon and then turn left on a rough 10 mile dirt road that takes you along Granite Creek to the springs. The snow-capped Gros Ventre mountains consume the horizon in every direction. We hiked along the Granite Creek, took some pictures, and soaked in the warm water for a long time. It was really nice to slow down for a few hours. It was like being in a little resort in the middle of nowhere.

Later that evening we headed to the Jackson Hole Rodeo. The students really got into the whole cowboy/cowgirl scene, sporting new boots, hats, and cameras of course. For most of them, it was their first rodeo, and a couple even got invited "back stage" where the real cowboys get ready to ride the bulls and broncs. Halfway through the rodeo the announcer asked where the West Virginia Photography Group was, and we all screamed and yelled with pride. It was a great evening in Jackson and another memorable experience for the students.

It's a rainy day, Friday, June 26th, and I'm finally finding the time to write about this past Tuesday. Days are blurring together here and we're getting down to the final hours. To tell you the truth, I had to look back through my pictures to remind myself what we did on Tuesday. We were in the studio until after 11 pm last night and woke up this morning at 4:30 am for a sunrise shoot that unfortunately didn't amount to much. My mind is mush, but here it goes...

On Tuesday, we had a much needed studio session in the morning. Everyone had lots of images and film to process from the big day in Yellowstone. After lunch, we met at the Oswald Gallery in downtown Jackson for a private tour and print viewing with co-owner and director, Leya Oswald. The Oswald gallery is something of an anomaly in this town. With all the wildlife and landscape photography, it's really refreshing to see some different approaches and subject matter. The gallery is full of some of the most famous photographers and photographs anywhere in the world, along with a number of emerging contemporary artists, and it just happens to be here in tiny Jackson, Wyoming. Student's were able to get right up close to the most famous Ansel Adams prints, some of which were worth several hundred thousand dollars each.

After the gallery viewing, we had a nice chunk of free time to make a run to the grocery store, do some laundry, rest...whatever. At 7:00 pm we had a guest lecture by Darren Clark, a Professor of Photography at BYU, Idaho. He did a presentation on several different bodies of work and then shared a whole bunch of prints. Darren photogarphs mostly near his home in rural Idaho. It's a simple, some might call boring landscape, but he feels a need to engage with it. The work was straightforward, but seemed genuine and honest. There was something about his style and subject matter that the student's really responded to. The prints he shared illustrated a wide array of talent and knowlege of different photographic processes, not to mention the fact that they were absolutely stunning! I hope to get Darren to come back again for future workshops.

To cap the day off, we decided to do an evening shoot at Schwabacher's Landing in Grand Teton National Park. We left town at 9:15 pm and the light was still lingering in shades of blue and orange. When we arrived at our destination it was close to dark, but you could still make out a silhouette of the Teton range. We wandered along the banks of the Snake River paying close attention to any sound or movements nearby. It was a very clear night with no moon, and within an hour the sky came alive with stars. We photographed and star gazed until well after midnight, reluctant to head back to the lights of town.

Yellowstone National Park. Everyone has been looking forward to this day for a long time. We pushed the outing back to make sure the weather would cooperate. The van was loaded by 7:15 am and we were on our way. The morning was crystal clear, but breezy and very cold. The temperature was 38 degrees when we left. It would only reach 50 degrees in Yellowstone that day. The early morning light was fantastic and we stopped along the way at famous spots in Grand Teton National Park, including Snake River Overlook, Oxbow Bend, and Jackson Lake. Our first stop in Yellowstone was West Thumb, a large tributary of the massive Yellowstone Lake. We walked along the boardwalk through a seemingly foreign landscape full of steaming thermal features, some of which were submerged below the surface of the Lake. We continued our route along the shores of Yellowstone Lake, stopping briefly to check out the beautiful Lake Hotel. At the Fishing Bridge junction we headed north along the Yellowstone River into one of my favorite parts of the park, the Hayden Valley. The scene in this valley is truly magnificent. It's like looking back through time. The brilliant green valley was spotted with bison, some very close to the road. They were the biggest, baddest looking bison I've ever seen. Next stop was Aritst's Point, overlooking the Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, a spot made famous by a Thomas Moran painting. The light was really nice and we spent quite a bit of time photographing in the area. We stopped for lunch in Canyon Village and then headed west across the park to Norris Geyser Basin. At Norris, you can seen nearly every type of thermal feature in the park in less than a mile hike. The landscape is out of this world. As we made our way south towards Old Faithful, we swung through the Firehole Canyon, a beautiful display of basalt canyon walls and roaring whitewater. We arrived at Old Faithful around 4:00 pm and caught the first "show" at 4:46. The crew spit up and hiked all over the geyser basin surrounding Old Faithful. At one point there was an issue along the trail with a bison mother who had just lost her calf in one of the thermal features. The mother bison was running around wildly charging people for no apparent reason. Some of the students' witnessed this event and shared the crazy story with the rest of us. Parts of the trail were shut down quickly by park rangers and no one was injured. We had dinner in the Old Faithful area and checked out the historic and magnificent Old Faithful Inn. On our way back to Jackson, we were treated with an event straight from the Nature Channel. A bear, not sure if it was grizzly or brown, ran across the road just behind us and into the woods on the other side of the road. Soon after, we heard a shrill like nothing I've ever heard before, and on the other side of the woods several elk came running out. We're not sure what transpired in those woods, but we didn't see the bear come back out. We made one last detour on our way home to the top of Signal Mountain in Grand Teton National Park. It was after 9:00 pm by the time we reached the summit, and the light had painted the landscape in shades of pink and purple. The view from the top is probably the best view in the park. You can see the whole valley in front of you, the jagged peaks of the Tetons off to one side and the snow capped Gros Ventre (grow vont) range on the other. We finally arrived at the Cowboy Village at 10:15 pm, all feeling like we'd been away from civilization for more than just a day. Our souls were renewed with a great appreciation for the power and mystery of the natural world.

3:45 am on day four and I was up and ready to go. We had planned a sunrise photo shoot in the park the night before, and I was chomping at the bit to get going. When I woke up it was still dark of course, and very cold. It was drizzling lightly and you could just make out the silhouette of the mountains. John and I debated about going and almost decided to just go back to bed, but we were awake and anxious to see what the light would bring. John and I packed the van with all the gear and went to knock on the students' doors. We convinced six out of twelve students to join us on our adventure. We were on the road by 5:00 am and headed to one of my favorite sunrise spots in Grand Teton National Park, called Schwabacher's Landing, which is a series of placid streams in the valley fed by the Snake River. The sky was full of stormy looking clouds that threatened to put quite a damper on our early wake up call. As the sun slowly filled the sky with color, the clouds parted just enough to reveal the peaks of the Tetons freshly dusted with snow. The view was constantly changing as winds pushed the clouds in front of the range. A giant rainbow appeared with a new front moving by. Afterwards, we took a tour through the Antelope Flats area and ran into a large heard of grazing bison. It was quite a spectacle, and we were all thankful for witnessing it.

We spent the afternoon working in the lab and John presented on his work before dinner. After dinner, I took a crew of students up into the park who weren't abe to make it for the morning shoot. I wasn't expecting very good light because the storms were pretty socked in, but once again, the light broke through and provided a beautiful drama to the scene. We found an obscure dirt road through the Antelope Flats and ran into all sorts of wildlife. At times, it felt like we were in the Serengetti. Pronghorned antelope, elk, and bison were all over the place. On our way out we ran into a bison jam of epic proportions. We parked the van, opened the doors and windows, and were literally surrounded by huge bison and their babies prancing around. What an incredible day! How can we possibly top this? Yellowstone tomorrow...

Yesterday was a huge day. I'm only now finding a moment to digest everything and update the blog. In the morning we did a tour of town and visited the many photography galleries. One of the actual artists was present and was nice enough to share his newest work in progress and answer all sorts of questions from the students.

After our gallery tour we took a break for lunch and headed to the Center for the Arts for our first studio session. We covered basic camera operations and began processing images. Later in the evening I presented on my work and influences and John did a demo on large and medium format cameras. It was a huge day of photography instruction for everyone. We were all saturated with imagery and information by the time 10pm rolled around and headed back to the cabins for some much needed rest. Especially considering our ambitious plans to wake up at 4:30am for a sunrise shoot in the park. More on that in the next post.
~Michael

Today was a very good day. We made a group trip to the grocery store for some provisions in the morning. Then we packed all 14 of us and our gear into the van for a trek to Grand Teton National Park. The park entrance is just a few miles north of town, but we traveled further up the park road, stopping along the way to take in the sights, and eventually making our way to the North Jenny Lake Junction. From there, all of us went for a great hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. The picture of the group was taken just below the falls. From left to right are: Leslie, Jake, Kate, Lisa, Dan, Val, Amanda, Beth, Klair, Kacy, John, Drew and Tom. The weather changed dramatically throughout the day, which is typical in the Rockies, but never threatened to rain. After our hike, we drove along the Moose-Wilson road to Teton Village for a nice group dinner at the infamous Mangy Moose in Teton Village. We were fortunate to catch some great views of wildlife in the area today including: moose, coyote, elk, marmot, and osprey. Supposedly, were going to get some heavy weather tomorrow, so we're planning to do a tour of town in the morning and begin processing our abundant photos in the afternoon at the Center for the Arts. Hope all is well in your world.
~Michael

We Made It!

Two flights, two shuttles, and a two hour time difference makes for a very long and disorienting day of travel. Nevertheless, all 12 students are accounted for and in good spirits. Our flight into the Jackson Hole Airport was spectacular. We cruised over the Bighorn Mountains in Eastern Wyoming, which were still covered in deep snow, and slowly made our way into the Jackson Hole area. I've come to know this valley so well over the years. It was a moving experience to see it all from the air. With chills and a permanent grin, I pointed out landmarks as we drifted by the mighty Teton range, the tallest peaks shrouded in clouds. The crisp, cool mountain air was a welcome relief as we stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac.

We made our way to the Cowboy Village Resort (CVR), which will serve as our home base for the next 10 days. Our cabins are nice and cozy with great views of the surrounding mountains and easy access to shopping and restaurants. I'll share some more views of the cabins in a later post. I held a quick town orientation session with the students and set them loose to find some grub.

Meanwhile, John Holmgren, who will be assisting me on the workshop, drove 15 hours straight from Prescott, Arizona to meet us at CVR. He timed his trip beautifully, arriving just 5 minutes after us! We made arrangements to pick up our rental van and headed straight for the Brewpub for one of those world famous beers.

Everyone is settled in now and looking forward to a great day tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be really nice and we have plans to go shoot up in Grand Teton National Park in the afternoon. Hope all is well in your worlds.
~Michael