Post # 3 of 3:  Teton Wildflowers

This is the third and final post from a 12-hour photoshoot I completed last week near Jackson, Wyoming. I started at about 9:45 p.m., one night and finished about 9:45 a.m. I did get about 3-1/2 hours sleep in between the moonrise and sunrise shots. I started at the Mormon Row Barn in the dark, surrounded by howling wolves and/or coyotes at moonrise. The next morning, I captured the sunrise reflection in a favorite beaver pond and photographed a successful fisherman. Finally I ended with the wildflowers on Antelope Flats Road, near the Mormon Row barn. Next summer, I want to start with the wildflowers in the early light, which is really the only time on the morning worth shooting. I saw some buffalo, as I was leaving, but failed to snag any good shots. My final image was the single sunflower and aspens on the Moose-Wilson road as I traveled back to Rexburg, Idaho. I was lucky to catch the wildflowers this late in the year. Earlier in July is better. My sister, a famous watercolor artist, learned this as she often loved to paint the Tetons in front of a field of blooming wildflowers.

Hopping songbird
Near the Mormon Row barn, I laid down to rest under the gable of the old orange homestead and watched the swallows fly in and out of their mud nests along the rooftop. One songbird accompanied their efforts from the point of the gable. I zoomed in on him and captured his exit as he hopped to another spot on the roof. His suspended and wingless flight was preceded by a single flap of his wings with a bouncing hop.

Dream vacation
The lack of wind and clouds was a welcome reprieve from what I had experienced on my last two trips to photograph the Tetons. What a fun, though exhausting, photoshoot. It is so sweet to live only 90 minutes from a location many people travel to from all over the world. Every single time I shoot there, I talk to folks who consider their vacation to the Jackson area, a lifelong dream. As I watched the fisherman, on my last post, pull in two trout in front of the most stunning Teton backdrop, he explained this was something he had been looking forward to for many years. Now that he was retired he was finally realizing what he called his “dream vacation.”