For the past five months, it’s been a bit like being part of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”    We’ve been on the road a great deal, at least five different travel destinations in that time with the shortest trip being a week. One of the many good things about that is that I have lots of images to share. 🙂

Our most recent trip was truly 20 years in the making.  We have been talking of going to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) for at least 20 years.  One thing or another always took precedence until we decided not to put it off any longer.  Despite it’s slightly lesser known status but due to it’s proximity to Yellowstone (due south 7 miles) we also added Grand Teton National Park to the itinerary.  We were there a week and felt like we only scratched the surface of these incredible places.  The word “amazing” was uttered hundreds of times throughout the week.

Breathtaking scenery, incredible wildlife in their natural habitat, the largest geyser field in the world, wildflowers galore, endless patterns and textures, water in all it’s forms, and much more ensured that my cameras were in constant use.

Almost 3000 images were captured and I’ve only begun to process them.   My favorite subjects to photograph are the details and the patterns and textures that often go unnoticed inside the larger scenes of life which present themselves to us, especially in places such as Yellowstone and Grand Teton.  Most of what I captured does fall in to that category of the often unnoticed.  But I could not deny the grandeur and majesty of these places and it seemed best to capture that in panoramic images (though, even these fall short of reality).

Unlike the panoramic photos that your phone may take, each of these images is a composite of from 2 to 8 different images merged in Photoshop to create one very large and wide scene, somewhat closer to how we see it with our eyes.  The wider panoramics have used the largest number of images to create them.  A blog is not really the best format to show panoramics, for instance the first image, a scene from the Lamar Valley in the NE part of YNP, is actually 36″ wide.   (Click on the images in the gallery to see them larger.)

This was the perfect place to play with creating panoramic images.  Every turn offered spectacular vistas.  However,  most of what I focused on were the details – the colors, the patterns, the textures.  I’ll share some of those, as well as details from other travels, over the next few weeks.  

Have you done anything recently that’s been on your list for a long time?