There are many surprising facts about Yellowstone when it comes to photography, not the least of which is that summer is not the best time to take photos here. From the very beginning Yellowstone has inspired photographers to record and document its natural wonders. Today Yellowstone is probably the most photographed National Park in the country. HISTORY Fur trappers' fantastic tales of cauldrons of bubbling mud and roaring geysers sending steamin.
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The brink of Lower Falls, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River |
Salvatore Vasapolli has a long list of photographs in his stock library, but one place that continually has inspired him for more than 20 years is Yellowstone National Park. The reason is simple, he says: It’s unlike any other place on earth.
“One reason that I love Yellowstone is that, out of all the parks I’ve been to, it’s the one park where geology actually lives,” says Vasapolli. “You could stand in front of a glacier all day, and it’s not going to look like it’s moved much. Whereas in Yellowstone, you can go to the geysers and hot springs and actually see the park itself being active. There’s an interaction with the land and the sky and the wildlife. That’s what attracts me to the park; it’s constantly changing.”
Looking back over two decades of photographs, it’s clear to Vasapolli how much the park has changed—both from the influx of tourism as well as the general activity of the region’s geological wonders.
“In Yellowstone, things change dramatically,” Vasapolli explains. “One photograph, Minerva Hot Springs, has been one of the most unique hot springs in Mammoth Terraces. It has moved over the hill, at times up to 100 feet from where it originated. The last time I checked, for the last several years, it has been gone—totally underground. It’s somewhere, but not on the surface. [In the photograph] that formation is probably only a few months old.
Bison herd at an erupting Old Faithful Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin | Minerva twilight, Mammoth Hot Springs |
“Tourists can be intense,” Vasapolli says of the park’s evolution. “There are locations, the many tourist areas, where at certain times you have to keep away from them. Crowded. In some areas, you’re shooting from a boardwalk, and if a person is walking on that boardwalk—and they could be hundreds of feet away—you get the vibration. It becomes difficult.”
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Near White Dome Geyser, Lower Geyser Basin |
Adds Vasapolli, “My favorite times are before the Fourth of July and then in the fall. About a week after Labor Day, it’s amazing how much different it is. But that’s changing as well because a lot of people who don’t have children are learning that it can be one of the best times to go. Weather-wise, normally two weekends after Labor Day, they may get their first snowstorm!”
To fight the influx of crowds amid the summer high season, Vasapolli makes sure to get out early—before the tourists invade, around 10 o’clock—and to take his explorations off the beaten path.
During the busy times, he heads into the backcountry in search of photos without having to worry about the crowded boardwalks.
“If you go more than a quarter mile past any trail, you rarely even see a person,” he says. “You might catch a backpacker. You get some of the people who have been on multiple trips and now want to discover some of the backcountry, which are some of the most beautiful areas. Of course, going to the more popular areas such as Heart Lake or Shoshone Lake, or the geyser basins, you’ll see a lot more tourists. But these areas are up to five miles into the backcountry.”
Indian paintbrush and three cones of Union Geyser, Shoshone Lake Geyser Basin |
Even when he’s not working far from the tourists, Vasapolli still has made some of his favorite shots, as he did with an image of the park’s signature spot, Old Faithful, and some of its indigenous residents.
“I try to conceive something in my mind that I’d like to photograph and how I’d like it to appear,” he explains. “I always wanted to get the Old Faithful bison herd in front of Old Faithful. No one has ever done it; I’ve seen images of the herd around it, yes, but I wanted a one-in-a-million photograph. Here, I’m photographing Old Faithful, and all of a sudden the bison start walking into the shot. Right at the moment, they walk up like they’re posing. It was something that can only happen by chance. That was something that I had always wanted to do. It’s a 4×5 photograph; they stood there long enough that I could get one really great shot. Old Faithful doesn’t last very long. If you don’t get it at the peak, you really don’t have a great photograph of Old Faithful.”
Of photography at the monument, he says, “It’s a difficult place to photograph. You’re about 200 yards from the geyser, there are boardwalks all around it—it’s a very nondescript landscape. You can only stay on the boardwalk, and where the boardwalk circles around the back, you drop down a hill. You could try photographing it from across the Firehole River, but then anyone could do that.”
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Hot spring along Ferris Fork Creek in the Bechler River Canyon region |
For any visitor to Yellowstone, Old Faithful is a must-see. But after that first visit—or, at least, after making the penultimate photograph that you could ever hope to make—it’s not the most scenic region of the park for a landscape photographer to spend his or her time. Vasapolli prefers other areas of the park, where he continually gets great shots, as well as those areas where the great photographs always remain just out of reach.
“The favorite places are the Upper and Lower Geyser basins,” he says. “I won’t tell you about my really favorite place—people will try to seek it out! What’s nice about those areas is that some of them are really close to the most heavily visited areas, but people never see them. You have to look off the beaten path. Yellowstone is a big area. In the Hoodoo area, you have to go when the water levels are down in the streams because you have to ford a river or two. It’s far in the backcountry, high up at the top of a ridgeline, so it can snow there any time of the year. A lot of times, when I tried planning a trip when everything seemed right, a snowstorm would come in. Every time I try to go, it’s, ‘I’m gonna do it next year, I’m gonna do it next year….’”
Much of Vasapolli’s enjoyment of Yellowstone is simply being in the park. When he does take his cameras, he carries a 35mm system as well as large-format. He’s especially deliberate when using the big 4×5 for a landscape.
Sunset in Yellowstone |
“I never have the feeling that I have to go and shoot something,” he says of his chosen profession. “In my photography, most of my artwork is speculative. I go out there to find what I can find, and if I can find something unique to photograph, yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll hang out there. I’ll even come back if I don’t have the opportunity to photograph it the way I wanted to the first time. If nothing works out, I won’t pull out the 4×5; I might continue to use the 35 to get some okay photographs for the files. The 35, to me, is my point-and-shoot. I don’t even have a digital camera for that.”
Adds Vasapolli, “I’m looking for something that’s unique. I study other people’s photography—one reason is for research, the other is so that I don’t copy them. It’s going to be different. People have said, I look at your photographs and I see something different.”
Part of that difference comes from the way Vasapolli works. Like so many dedicated landscape photographers, he has continued shooting large-format film—both for the camera controls and for the unique color and contrast characteristics of the traditional media.
“Film has the widest color spectrum,” says Vasapolli. “You can’t replace some of those colors. I can take several sheets of it and I don’t have to worry about erasing it. The 4×5 is an artist’s camera. I try to use the 4×5 to get that long-range shot of something unique in the foreground that works well with its background. For me, you see that there’s something very interesting in the foreground—that’s the subject. But with the use of the 4×5, I can have the background in sharp focus as well. It may take 45 minutes to an hour to set it up right, but in the end you come up with something that’s a work of art.”
Salvatore Vasapolli exhibits his photographs at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., October 11, 2008, through January 4, 2009 (www.museumoftherockies.org). Epson and Outdoor Photographer are sponsors. Vasapolli is currently working on a photo essay documenting California’s wine country. Visit www.vasapolliphotography.com.
Vasapolli’s Gear | |
Calumet XM Rosewood Field 4×5 camera Caltar 210mm, 90mm, 75mm lenses Various 35mm Canon EOS bodies Canon 24mm, 28-135mm, 80-200mm, 300mm L, 50mm, 50mm macro lenses Bogen tripods & heads Gitzo Mountaineer tripod |
Tom Murphy: Yellowstone Photographer
His iconic photos have captured the world; but it’s Yellowstone that claims his heart
If you’re a legitimate wildlife photographer anywhere in the world, you’ve spent time in Yellowstone National Park. If you’re Tom Murphy, you arrived in 1975 and never quite left.
“Where else can I get up in the morning and within an hour see grizzly bears, bison, wolves, just all these amazing things?” asks the Livingston, Montana, resident.
He’s slept in the dirt and in the snow. He’s brought his students with Wilderness Photography Expeditions to the mountains and valleys in between. And all along the way, he’s taken photographs that have become a symbol of Yellowstone National Park.
Murphy officially moved to the Yellowstone area in 1978 and became the first person licensed to lead photography tours in Yellowstone Park. He has skied across the park three times, and estimates he’s done about 45 overnight ski trips in the park, traveling over 2,000 miles on those trips. The miles have afforded a lot of stories, which Murphy is turning into a book on skiing.
As a completely self-taught photographer, he says he has no regrets. He’s struggled through all the mistakes, and now, as a teacher, he understands the learning process. The result is a devoted following of students, and today Murphy travels the world, teaching and photographing from Alaska to Antarctica, Africa and New Zealand.
But the Yellowstone region is always home. “This is still my favorite place,” he says.
The Zen of Photography, According to Murphy
“My goal is to tell stories through still photography images,” says Murphy. It’s about understanding light and animal behavior. But it’s also about seeing.
“A successful photograph has to tell part of a story, of the photographer’s experience and their emotional response,” he explains. These stories, he says, are stronger if a photograph has the sense of being more three-dimensional. It’s a trademark of Murphy’s stunning work—the way a two-dimensional image creates an illusion of space, volume and depth. “You want to walk into that photograph,” he says. “You want to create some kind of emotional response.”
But Murphy is also cognizant of the deeper meaning of his work. “I really do want people to get connected to wild places,” he says. “If I can make a photograph … and make it something beautiful and people recognize it as beautiful, then they will recognize that as valuable. And therefore, if it’s valuable, it’s worth saving.”
For Murphy, Yellowstone is a place he’ll never stop coming back to because it’s so big, so varied, and because it’s wild.
PRO TIPS:
Finding the Right Moment
Murphy says, “I pretty much place myself as a victim of serendipity.” He prefers to go out and wander around. “Something is happening everywhere,” he opines. You don’t have to follow the crowds; he prefers to have a sense of discovery about the day. As he gets older, he says, he’s learning to see better.
For park visitors, he suggests, “Walk off, out of sight of the road, and sit down for a while, and you’ll get a much better sense of what Yellowstone really is.”
Making Your Own Luck
“You make your own luck,” says Murphy. “And the more you know, the better your luck is going to be.” So that means, he says, you need to educate yourself. Learn things like that the bison calve towards the end of April and the elk a month later at the end of May. Learn that the best time to find a grizzly bear is in April and May, but it’ll be better viewing if there’s a lot of snow up high and they’re coming down low to feed. Know the migration patterns of birds.
The Right Equipment
“It’s necessary to have a good, long lens for wildlife” says Murphy. He suggests 400mm or more. When you have to keep at least 100 yards from bears and wolves, a 200mm lens doesn’t work. He also suggests having a pair of binoculars: they’re useful to anticipate a photo, watch light, and so on.
MEET THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Tom Murphy is part of the Inspired by Yellowstone Artist Series, which brings local artists into the park to share their work and talk with visitors.
His 2019 appearances:
June 11-13: Old Faithful Inn
June 25-27: Old Faithful Inn
July 3-5: Lake Hotel
July 30 – August 1: Lake Hotel
Jennifer White is a writer living in Paradise Valley, Montana. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of publications, from Women’s Adventure to Backcountry Journal, Narrative Magazine, and Conde Nast Traveler online. She has served as an artist-in-residence in Glacier National Park and enjoys calling the Yellowstone region home.
For more travel experiences to Beautiful Places on Earth™ available from Xanterra Travel Collection and its affiliated properties, visit xanterra.com/explore.
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