I’m just back from a great trip with my friends Will & Lawrence to Yellowstone and southern Montana. Due to scheduling issues we almost missed the winter season but got there just in time for some good snow scenes and plenty of animals along the roads…

Staying in the park at Mammoth Hot Springs let us get a head start each morning although we never really had great sunrise opportunities. We divided our time between driving on the plowed sections of the park’s roads and chartering a snow coach to visit the geothermal regions of the park along with Old Faithful—with a little snow hiking mixed in.

We were treated to a plethora of Elk and Bison, with frequent ‘bison-jams’ on the road. Unlike the summer season the cold weather keeps the flood of tourists away to it was possible to watch and photograph the bison and elk herds nearly in solitude in some cases. Of course any wolf sightings were accompanied by a slew of cars and a pack of spotting scopes.

American Bison (aka “Buffalo”)

The unseasonably warm weather made it really pleasant to stand outside photographing behind our tripods and gave us some gorgeous light, but it also made it hard to get shots with great frost and steam coming from the animal’s nostrils.

Like with any large mammals eyes are crucial. Getting them visible and in focus can be a real trick in the bright sun as animals don’t like looking into it any more than your family when you try to get their portrait in front of a landmark at mid-day. The key is positioning and patience. Put yourself in the right location for the shot when the animal looks up, pre-focus on where the eyes will be when that occurs, and wait. This is one of many great reasons to have a tripod. It is much easier to hang out with one hand already on the camera waiting for the action than to have to keep dragging a camera and lens up from beside your body every time you think the animal might do something interesting.

Big-Horn Sheep

There was a well known location for big-horn sheep rams on the north side of the driveable road and they didn’t disappoint. They were reliable every day. We also found several large herds of Elk which were fairly cooperative—more than once crossing back and forth across the road area while we photographed them.

Obviously one of the big tricks in this situation is backgrounds. Pavement isn’t very pretty and neither are approaching cars. The brown ground that some high spots featured isn’t ideal either. This time of year your best bet is snow, mountains or blue sky.

One other big difference when photographing these herds of animals is footprints. I’m so used to trying to get footprints out of my shots (when shooting on sand dunes in Death Valley for example) that it was sort of refreshing to realize that all the prints we were seeing were from the animals themselves. That didn’t make them look any less distracting but at least they were part of the wild.

Rocky Mountain Elk

Elk are at the heart of a number of controversies in Montana. The most well known is over wolves. The Elk population peaked at over 20,000 in Yellowstone before the re-introduction of wolves. It is well below 10,000 now due at least in some part to the restoration and success of one of their natural predators. Obviously this impacts the sport and business of hunting which is a big part of the economy of some of the local small towns. Conversely it is one more good reason for visitors to come to the area which provides at least some additional revenue. The reduction in Elk has also allowed the riparian areas in the Park to begin re-growing which restores a beautiful ecosystem to the Park which had been greatly reduced by Elk feeding.

Rocky Mountain Elk Male near Gardiner, MT
Nikon D300, 200-400mm f/4

Less well known is the game farm controversy. Largely driven by hunters (something like 20% of all Montana residents hunt) game farms (private ranches where hunters can pay a fee for a guided Elk hunt) have been greatly limited as a result of a statewide referendum. The fear, as with fish farming in sport and commercial fishing areas, is captive stock infecting the wild population. No doubt there were some “eco-votes” in favor of the proposal as well.

In any case we found plenty of Elk in the park, including a few of the large males which still had their racks. They’re certainly not as easy to photograph as the Bison as being hunted they are of course shy of people and vehicles, but they were cooperative enough to give us nice images without us having to stress them.

Our Exploding World

Hot pools and geysers are a big part of what makes Yellowstone famous. Our entire planet’s surface is over geothermal activity but in Yellowstone it is remarkably close to the surface as the constant activity makes clear. The beautiful pools get their color not just from minerals but from the differently colored organisms that grow in the hot and chemical-laden water. The colors are not as vibrant as in the summer, but the snow adds a unique dimension to many of the pools. We found a “snow volcano” at the Norris hot springs which made for quite an unusual site.

We were also blessed with a beautiful blue sky background for our mid-day visit to “Old Faithful”—one of the most predictable geysers anywhere. Every one to two hours (they say every 80 minutes give or take 10, but when we were there it was nearly 100 minutes between eruptions so schedule generously) it goes off with a column of spray and steam over 100 feet high. And of course from there the steam clouds start to drift all the way to the horizon.

The geothermal activity is not only amazing, it is dangerous. It is one of the few pieces of scenery that can fight back. So in those areas it is critical to stay on the boardwalks and marked paths as the crust can be very thin and in some cases easily stepped through.

Historic images of people on the pool areas with bicycles and umbrellas are amazing but accidents certainly occurred also.

Don’t be afraid to photograph the pools at mid-day since that is often when they gather the most light from the sun, but experiment with using a polarizer to help cut out the glare reflected from the ample sky and snow surfaces.

Horseshoe Bend Geothermal Area, Yellowstone National Park
Nikon D700, 24-85mm f/2.8-f/4 lens with Polarizer

Landscape and Scenics

Even without the geothermal activity visiting northern Yellowstone and the nearby areas in Montana is a scenic treat. Spectacular valleys including the well-known Lamar River Valley change every day as the light and snow comes and goesView of Lamar Valley from the Highway

Each minute after sunrise we were treated to different looks as light and shadow changed. Unfortunately we couldn’t be everywhere in the Park at once, but there were plenty of opportunities for interesting images.

Electric Peak from the “snow road” in the morning light
Nikon D700, 24-85mm f/2.8-f/4 lens

Creative Options

In addition to the traditional ways of capturing images of Yellowstone the creative possibilities are endless. Accomplished photographer and friend Lawrence Ripsher went retro, taking a 4x5 film camera as his only camera body. Alternating between black and white and color he probably shot less images in the entire trip than Will and I did in an hour of wildlife action. But his creative eye is unique and judging by the early scans I’ve seen he got some great ones.

Lawrence found us this great sunrise tree image

My image of the “sunrise tree”—I decided an ND filter
wouldn’t be enough to block out the sun so I opted to compose low

Even the coyote, hunted at will to this day as vermin by many in Wyoming and Montana is shown to its best in the bright sunshine and glistening snow. The coyotes we saw were always a little shy but from time to time we got some nice poses like this one:

Coyote hunting near the road in Yellowstone National Park
Nikon D700, 200-400mm lens

Photographing Yellowstone

Yellowstone is photogenic any time of year. There are a couple books which provide some simple tips for where to go and what you might see there although they are mostly aimed at the summer season. They’re very inexpensive so I’d recommend getting both as they each have different strengths so we flipped back and forth a lot between them.

Photographing Yellowstone National Park: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them by Gustav W. Verderber

Photographing Wild Life in the Yellowstone by Joseph K. Lange

The good news is that the Park is very approachable with an extensive road system and great markings. There is also enough wildlife that you can get good shots often without having to trek too far from the road with your gear. In Winter the options are limited so you’ll either need to stay in the north part of the Park at Mammoth Hot Springs (or outside in Gardiner) and travel the Mammoth to Cooke City road (and rent a snow coach to take you to Old Faithful or the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone) or take a snow coach to the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful and base out of there (but you’ll need to have a snow coach with you for any travel).

If you’re driving and have a really long lens like a 500f/4 or 600f/4 it’s well worth bringing, especially if you get sort of close to some wolf action. But you can certainly take good photos with a 100-400 range lens or of course the Nikon 200-400, or a fixed 300mm with Teleconverter or a fixed 400mm. I’m looking forward to my visit there in June with my 600mm f/4 as there are many bird species there that we don’t have where I normally visit.

If you want the deluxe experience I highly recommend going on a photo workshop with one of my good friends Moose Peterson or Laurie Excell. Depending on the year one or both of them lead safaris and workshops there and know the territory and how to teach photography as well as anyone I know.

Gallery of Images

If you’ve enjoyed the images in this post you can see a more complete set of some of my favorites in this slideshow: