Chapter Ten - Morning at the Two Overlooks - Snake River and Blacktail Ponds

As you prepare to head out before dawn once again, be sure and consume an energy bar or two this morning since you've got a full morning of shooting ahead of you. Since by now you are an old hand at checking for today's sunrise time, I'd suggest you leave at least 45 minutes prior to sunrise. As in the past, this will give you time to set up your tripod properly and it allows a cushion in the event that you encounter wildlife on your journey to your next landscape location.

Heading north on Highway 89 out of downtown Jackson, you are going to travel approximately 20 miles to the location made famous by Ansel Adams - the Snake River Overlook. Almost everyone in North America has seen his iconic shot of the bending river below the ridge and his timeless interpretation of the scene.

When you arrive, you'll turn left off the highway and you'll notice a long parking lot with a turnaround at the end. If you are early enough, the lot may be deserted - but if you're late, you might scramble to find a spot. This is what I call I magnet location - it draws everyone on vacation who has a camera.

As you get out of your car and approach the overlook, you'll see a four foot stone wall that has been built out of native boulders and that extends for a hundred feet or more. You'll want to set up as far to the north as possible where you still have a clear view of the river below. And although the wall is there to keep the crowds from walking off the overlook and down the hillside, you can easily jump up on the wall and get on the other side if you think that's a better setup location.

One thing you will note almost immediately is that this is not the exact scene before you that you saw in Ansel Adam's outstanding photo. Well, that's absolutely true. The trees in front of you have grown in the last 50 years and they do block more of the scene than they did when Ansel was standing with his tripod where you are right now.

But you can still get that great turn in the Snake River below as it shifts its course west from its southerly flow. And if you are here before sunrise and the weather cooperates, you should be able to get that famous alpenglow light that turns the mountain range a beautiful shade of pink and red when the first light illuminates the mountains.

Many photographers feel that they can't get high enough to shoot over the trees like they would like - but it's the harsh reality of the location today. You can try standing on the wall and setting up your tripod on the wall itself, but that's pretty iffy as a stable platform.

Another thing to look and hope for when you visit this location is the early morning fog that will hang just above the river when it is cool in the morning. Now if you are visiting in the middle of summer, it may be too hot for this to occur for you. But if you are here in the early spring or late autumn time period, it is likely to happen. And so you'll obviously want to incorporate this nature phenomenon in your shot - hopefully where you can still see the river below peeking through the fog.

Because it will be very early when you visit, you'll be dealing with uneven light as the first light touches the mountains. I would suggest you crank up your ISO setting as far as possible without causing too much noise to appear. On most newer DSLR cameras, you can safely go to 1000 ISO and still retain good clarity. I would then set my aperture setting at f/8 (if cloud cover is extensive) or f/16 (if little cloud cover is present) and use your remote to trigger the shutter while your camera in on the tripod. In the early morning light, this may cause a relatively long exposure, but it will allow you to capture the nuances of color and light that appear at this magical site. And remember, if you don't have a remote trigger, just use the built in timer that virtually every camera made it the last ten years has available.

And if you happen to not have gotten up as early as you planned, or if you decided to have breakfast with the family before you headed out, don't despair. Although this is one of the four locations that I think merit a specific sunrise trip (Oxbow Bend, Moulton Barn and Triangle X Ranch are the others) - it doesn't mean you can't take good shot at any point in the morning. Because of the location, you can reasonably shoot here until at least noon, but you'll find that the afternoon sun and haze may make it untenable past that time.

You may also want to experiment with setting up your tripod a little bit south of the standard location where everyone sets up. You have to move left past the trees in the foreground and you'll come to another opening in the scene. You cannot capture the bend in the river as well, but it is still a fine shot and allows the depth that so many landscape photographers crave when shooting this type of photo.

One other thing you might want to consider is to drop back by here for a few brief minutes in mid-morning. The reason is that you can then use a circular polarizer or a warming filter much more effectively when you have good light. This will help you control the exposure and should result in a couple of images that you'll really like as a contrast to your early morning shots.

Once you have completed working the scene at the Snake River Overlook, I'd suggest you hop in your vehicle and head approximately seven miles south to our next stop - Blacktail Ponds Overlook.

You may feel like you are backtracking a bit - and you are - but I wanted to put you at the best spot first during the very early morning light. Because of its proximity, Blacktail Ponds Overlook is a great second destination after the sun has risen high enough on the eastern horizon to illuminate the meadow below the mountain.

As you turn west off Highway 89 into the roadway that leads to the Blacktail Ponds parking lot, you'll notice that the ridge you are approaching is covered with sagebrush. Be sure and consider this as an appropriate foreground subject when you are composing your shots at this location. Although I'm the first to suggest a tripod when you are doing landscape photo work, I also think it's important to try getting low and seeing how this vantage point can change a composition. When I lead a photo tour and share this advice, invariably by the end of the tour half the group is laying on the ground and shooting landscapes and they often tell me that their favorites were the shots taken from the ground.

The meadow that lies below the ridge at Blacktail Ponds Overlook is full of willow trees and so you may happen upon a moose or two grazing below you. Most people spend all their time shooting off the ridge, but I find that if you are the adventurous type, you can get some killer shots by hiking down the ridge and shooting from the meadow itself. Because of the way that the trees frame the bottom of the Teton mountain range, you can get some layers within the frame of your composition. And of course, it also is predicated on when you are visiting as the colors before you change as the season progresses and the hot sun turns the grasses from green to brown.

The scene before you at this overlook provides a multitude of different angles and composition options. There is of course the straight ahead shot with the meadow below. But after having visited this site many times, I've come to appreciate the subtle differences that you can make in your landscape photo work here by pivoting a bit from straight on and shooting in a west/southwest angle. You can accomplish this by walking to your right and head north for a hundred feet or so until you get a view of the small branch of the Snake River that is headed towards the mountains.

In terms of lens and camera setup, you've got lots and lots of options here as well. The cloud cover - or lack thereof - will help you determine what f/stop to go with and if the day is sunny, you'd be in good shape at f/16 as long as you are shooting from a tripod. I'd suggest a relatively wide angle lens here to capture the expanse that lays below you, or you could rotate the tripod and capture a series of side by side shots to stitch together as a panorama later.

But what should you do if you've got extensive cloud cover when you visit Blacktail Ponds? Well, you can mark it as a place you'd like to return to on a different day, but if you are pressed for time then you'll have to make the best of a mediocre situation.

I'd suggest you put the cloud cover to good use by taking some darker exposures by going to manual exposure and overriding the "correct" exposure setting. You can experiment and see how the exposure will change the scene, but if you're willing to shoot several different exposures, I think you'll be amazed at how the clouds can become ominous and foreboding. I have found that always shooting on the "A" setting (Aperture Priority) is normally a good default but that there are many other options available that will depend specifically on the light and the scene.

Another option is to experiment with filters if you have them with you. A polarizer or a warming filter can do wonders to change the scene into something different . There are also a lot of post processing filters on the market that will do this in the comfort of your own home if you didn't have a filter when you took the original shot.

After you have had a chance to work this scene, you'll probably notice that the sun is continuing its inevitable rise and the light and color nuances are changing. With that in mind, I'd suggest you pack up your gear and head back to Highway 89 and turn north for the next destination on our photography journey - Elk Ranch Flats.