Photographing Yosemite And Grand Teton National Parks

Taking Aim At Nature

By Nancy K. Crevier

Shooting a grizzly from forty feet must be done carefully, said retired Newtown physician Bob Berthier. Frank Gardner agreed, saying, “You have to know your safety zone. You have to concentrate on the animal and know if it’s getting aggravated.”

The shooting that Dr Berthier and Mr Gardner are referring to, though, has nothing to do with rifles or bows and arrows. While both men have bagged their share of wildlife in the past, the tool they choose these days when they go out shooting is more likely to be a single-lens reflex digital camera.

Photography, said Dr Berthier, is actually not unlike hunting. “There is something about seeking out, finding, and capturing that makes photography satisfying,” he said. “It’s a challenge to capture an animal in its environment.”

The men, who became good friends after judging an area photography contest two years ago, returned in mid-October from a two-week trip to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where they captured frame after frame of that region’s natural beauty.

Dr Berthier and Mr Gardner, both of whom have been avid cameramen for 25 years and have visited the western Rockies independently in the past, said that traveling with a fellow photographer was a gratifying experience.

“We would push each other to go places we might not have gone,” said Dr Berthier. “We learned from each other, spent some time critiquing each other’s work.”

Mr Gardner added, “When you share a common interest, you reinforce each other.”

The draw of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, said the men, is the changing face the parks present from moment to moment and from season to season. Autumn in particular is an exciting time for photographers in Yellowstone, they said. Brilliant fall colors and active wildlife are at their peak on cool, fall days, making for stunning photographic results.

 “In the fall,” explained Dr Berthier, “the animals are physically in good shape. They have just come off a summer of feeding, and their fur is thick, getting ready for winter. It makes for good photos.”

 “Yellowstone is absolutely one of the best places for photography,” said Mr Gardner. “There’s a huge diversity of subjects there.”

It is that diversity that makes Yellowstone unique, is Dr Berthier’s opinion. “If you’re not having luck taking pictures  of wildlife, there are always landscape subjects you can take.”

This fall was a bonanza so far as photographing wildlife went, though. Pronghorn antelope, bison, eagles, coyote, mule deer, moose, elk, and grizzly and black bears pawed, preened, and posed as Dr Berthier and Mr Gardner made their way from the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park to Grand Teton National Park and back up through Yellowstone Park, from south to north. Between them, they snapped over 1,000 digital and slide photographs, editing many in the field and then again in the evenings, to come up with just under 200 pictures that they felt best exemplified their journey.

While every season and each time of day has its own nuance, there are certain periods during the day that photographers esteem.

“They are called ‘The Golden Hours.’ Those are the couple of hours just after sunrise and just before sunset,” Mr Gardner said, and the two photographers tried to take advantage of the lighting and mood of those hours when taking photos. There are other subtleties that they look for to create a good picture, they said, and the Rocky Mountains in autumn offer many of those  fine points.

“Atmospherically, there are things that change the landscape,” offered Dr Berthier. “In Yellowstone, for example, you have a lot of thermal activity from the geysers, there’s fog, there’s snow.”

They look for interaction between the animals or between the animal and its environment when composing a picture.

“We like to take wildlife pictures in the natural environment. It makes a huge difference,” said Mr Gardner. All of these seemingly small details can mean the difference between a good picture and a great picture.

Even on a trip such as this one when the weather, the animal activity, and the conditions came together in nearly perfect unison, they said, there were still small pockets of disappointment. “We saw no wolves on this trip at all,” said Mr Gardner, who would enjoy the challenge of capturing the wild canine on film. “Wolves are probably the most difficult animal to photograph. They are hard to find and hard to photograph.”

For Dr Berthier, it was the great grey owl that was his nemesis. “I’ve been looking for the great grey for years,” he said.

“He really wanted to get a picture of the great grey owl. We even went out in a snow storm to look for one,” said Mr Gardner. One is all that they saw and as a photographic subject, said Dr Berthier, the owl was rather uncooperative.

“So, there is definitely disappointment on any trip,” Dr Berthier said.

On their own, the trip would still have offered the same spectacular scenery and opportunities, said Mr Gardner and Mr Berthier, but having company magnified the experience. “One day we stood next to each other at Ox Bow Bend in Grand Teton and just shot and shot and shot. It was the highlight of the trip,” Mr Gardner stated. “Sharing an interest with a good friend made a good trip better.”

The trip was a mix of pleasure, hard work, and perseverance — including a few shots taken by Mr Gardener from precarious perches — and they hope to share the results of their efforts with others. A winter presentation of the photographs for Candlewood Camera Club, to which Mr Gardner belongs, and for Flagpole Photographers, the local club of which Dr Berthier is a member, as well as a possible public presentation, is in the works.