Grand Teton National Park

James Griffiths March 20, 2019

“Begin Again” - The Grand Tetons from across Jackson Lake

If you love jagged edge mountains as much as I do this should be one of your favorite parks. I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of this place, but the views are amazing almost anywhere you find yourself. The top picture here was taken on a beach off the side of the road that travels along Jackson Lake, and you have this view for most of that drive. The park is situated just south of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and may be overshadowed by the more famous park. I’m not here to say one is better than the other, I love them both, but it usually seems easier to find yourself alone with the mountains down in the Tetons. It’s easy to visit both parks on the same trip anyway, so there’s no need to decide between them. On the trip where these photos were taken my friends and I only spent a day here, I wouldn’t say that’s enough time but you can definitely still see a lot.

“Falling” - Water falls running down the side of the mountains from south of Jenny Lake.

All of the pictures in this post are from my most recent trip to the Tetons in October 2018. It was my second time visiting but the first time I really took the time to enjoy it. We drove into the park from the south through Jackson Hole. From there you’re greeted with amazing close up views of the mountains right from the road and pull offs. I used a telephoto lens for the image above to bring out the waterfalls coming down the sides, taken at one of those pull offs.

“Introspection” - Grand Teton from across Jenny Lake.

Most of this trip was spend around Jenny Lake, a beautiful area south of the larger Jackson Lake. Above was one of my first views in the area, not far from the visitor center. There are plenty of trails around but I think some of my favorite views are a few hundred feet from the parking lot.

“Hidden Falls” - Off of a trail near Jenny Lake.

That trail we took went to Hidden Falls, a waterfall somewhat into the woods along the lake. Now I thought it was about a 1 mile hike, but somehow I had read the map from the other side of the lake and it was actually closer to 6, my friends didn’t trust me to read the maps after that. Still it wasn’t a bad hike and you have some great views of the lake and eventually the waterfall at the end. Just make sure you’re prepared for a little more than a quick walk in the park unless you actually know where you are.

“Jenny Lake” - A view of the mountains across Jenny Lake from some paths near the visitor center.

And here’s another shot from Jenny Lake, appropriately called Jenny Lake because I thought it kind of captured the essence of the area. We left from here and drove north alongside Jackson Lake while the sun began to set. With a few stops along the way including the one where I took the picture at the top of this post we had driven through the park by nightfall. I think that’s one of the great appeals of this park, most of what you want to see is readily accessible, and if you want to see a bit more there are plenty of hikes to gorgeous spots as well. We only spent one full day here, I could definitely spend more but any amount of time seems to be worth it.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

James Griffiths June 8, 2018

The Grand Staircase-Escalante is a large National Monument in southern Utah. It was originally established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton as a 1,880,461 acre monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM,). In 2017 President Donald Trump reduced the size of the monument to 1,003,863 acres. There are 3 distinct areas of the monument, the Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits, and Escalante Canyon. It's one of the more diverse monuments and is most often characterized by it's colorful cliffs, slot canyons, and various desert monoliths.

I went there for the first time in March 2017 and spent some time in the Paria area, which is basically this road leading to the remains of a ghost town. I thought it would actually be a ghost town with buildings and what not but it's really just some markers of where the town used to be, although the graveyard is still there. The easily definable layers in the cliffs and the vast stretches of the plateaus and mesas in this area give a clear view of the staircase that gives the monument it's name. You can see an image I captured from just off the road here on the top of this post. And keep in mind this "road" is not for the faint of heart. It seems like a normal dirt road when you first start out but around a particular corner the you'll find yourself driving on the top of these cliffs that drop off on either side. It's really not as bad as it feels once you step out of the car though, and in my opinion the best views are from the side of this road.

I was back in the staircase almost exactly one year later (this past March) and hiked into the famous Toadstool Hoodoos. This is one of the more surreal places in the area in my opinion. It's maybe a mile hike into the back area where you reach a plateau lined with cliffs and these odd shaped monoliths jutting out all over it.

The hike isn't all too strenuous, but does require you to either not mind walking on a one foot wide path with a 30 foot drop on either side or find a way to climb up a 5-10 foot cliff. Either way being there is definitely worth it.

That's all I've seen so far of this monument, I'll just keep chipping away at seeing little pieces of it. The small sections I have seen are definitely worth a visit though.

My National Park & Monument List

National Park and Monuments

James Griffiths June 8, 2018

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2017 In Review

James Griffiths January 20, 2018

This is a little late, January kind of got away from me, but I wanted to share a recap of my year. This was the first full year that I've really focused on improving my photography, before this point I was a very casual photographer often going months at a time without even picking up my camera. It was in the fall of 2016 that I realized how therapeutic it can be through the entire creative process, and it quickly grew from a casual hobby to something of a passion. I also have done more traveling this past year than I ever have before. I've been to 32 states (14 of which I'd never been to before) and spent 59 nights away. It's particularly been interesting since I quit my job last may to focus on myself and my own projects (both with photography and programming). So I thought I'd go through this past year month by month using my favorite photos from each month (when they were taken not necessarily when they were posted) as the subjects.

January
The photo for this month is at the top of this post. Kind of fitting because I think it's still my favorite photo of the year (or at least a close runner up). I'd wanted a photo like this for a while, a cool lake leading up to a snow capped mountain, and I finally saw it with the waning sunlight hitting the peak while driving through Olympic National Park in Washington State with my sister. We were in the Seattle area for a long weekend and made the most of the time there, but this was actually taken only a few hours after landing in Sea-Tac.

February
This month spent a few days up at my parent's cabin in Upstate New York, but was home for the most part. I love the island I live on, mountains and deserts are amazing but there's no comparison for an ocean sunset (or in this case a bay sunset - close enough). This was taken a few hours after a snowfall stopped in early February. The names I choose for the photos I share are usually either the name of the place or some combination of the way I was feeling when taking the photo along with how the photo makes me feel. For instance this one is called "Stuck" because it was at a point in my life when I was feeling kind of trapped, I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life but hadn't figured out what yet and didn't think I could quit my job to figure it all out (which is what I wanted to do). You can also kind of see it in the way the overcast sky traps the colors of the sunset at the horizon, yet the pinks and purples still manage to push past that barrier. It's also called this because I had accidentally driven my car off the parking lot pavement and into the sand (it was all covered in snow) and literally had to get my car unstuck after I took this photo.

March
This month I went to the Southwest for the first time with my father. It has since become my favorite part of the country. I've wanted to go to Horseshoe Bend for years, so it was a kind of surreal experience finally being there. I'm showing two photos from this month because they kind of go together. It was drizzling on and off on the walk to the edge of the canyon and for a few minutes a rainbow appeared. I was glad I had my camera out at the time because it was gone a moment after I took that shot. Then I was at the edge, where I found a good spot and waited there for nearly an hour while the light changed to make sure I wouldn't lose this key spot - It was a Saturday night and it does get pretty crowded there that time of day.

April
I realized when going through the photos for this post that I never posted anything I took in April. I had taken a few but nothing all that interesting and I was probably more involved with going through my photos from my southwest trip at the time. I had also given in my two weeks notice to my job in the middle of this month so I was focused on finalizing things there. I did spend another weekend up at my parent's cabin with some friends (I go there several times a year because it's a really convenient getaway).

May
I have two photos again because they were taken at the same place, and although my favorite is the first one the second one was much more popular on social media. I still like both but I think it's interesting when a photo I love isn't as well received as one I thought was good, but not as good. I was in Tennessee for my sister's graduation staying at this cabin. The first photo I planned the night before, rolled out of bed before sunrise, opened the window, and took the shot. Then I went back to bed. The next one I just wanted a cool glowing cabin night shot and the moon happened to be in the perfect spot to make a "moon-star" - I guess. My last day at my job was the day I left to come here, so it felt like the start of something new and that's kind of the feeling I had when taking these. The very end of this month was when I began my road trip around the country.

"The Yellowstone River" - Yellowstone National Park

June
This month is difficult to choose my favorite or best photos for, most months are to some degree, but I spent so much time driving around the country and taking photos nearly every day. The first image here is from Yellowstone National Park, a multi-shot long exposure of the Yellowstone River that I took my first time seeing it. It ended up being one of my most popular photos on social media in 2017. The second image is of Mount Shasta in northern California. I was driving around this mountain for nearly an hour on my way to San Francisco and as the light was getting better I decided that I had to stop and find a composition for it. I'm really happy with how it turned out especially being it was unplanned and from the side of the road. The third image is from Tennessee towards the end of my trip. I didn't expect one of my favorite images from this trip to be from the same half of the country I live on, but it was. I love the smooth waterfall and reflections creating those leading lines, and it was just a nice picture to close out my trip (I think this was basically the last one I took).

July
I stayed home for most of the summer after I got back from my cross country trip. I drove for Uber for a while to make a little extra cash but wanted to focus most of my energy on photography and some programming ideas. This image was from the north shore of Long Island in the early part of the month. Just a simple golden sunset, kind of the way I'm feeling at this point.

August
I love this shot, it's of the Fire Island Lighthouse about 10 minutes from my home. Lighthouses to me have a powerful yet calming feeling to them, guarding the sea. I've shot this one several times, but this was the first time I planned out a trip there before sunrise to this particular beach. I like to incorporate little details in my images that you might not notice at first glance whenever I can. In this one you can see the moon directly above the lighthouse, it's very small here because I'm using a wide angle lens but it's presence adds a bit of depth to the image.

September
By September I was getting the urge to go somewhere, and that somewhere was once again my parent's cabin (on my way up to Maine). A few miles away on top of Mount Utsayantha I got this image. I've been to the top of that mountain several times but this was the first time at sunset. After a few days there I left for Maine, but that was technically in October.

October
Here I am in Maine, or rather here are 2 pictures I really like that I took in Maine. The first one was just outside Baxter State Park on my way back to a hotel. I was trying to get a shot of a full moon that was setting but by the time I found a good spot to pull over it was gone, and this was there. Even though I've seen a lot of similar images I didn't want that to stop me from trying one out myself. The next image is from Acadia National Park, this was one of my favorite parts of the park, Otter Point I think, that I had scouted out in the afternoon. The rock I'm standing on felt much more precarious when I came back around sunset to shoot this, but it was worth it.

November
So this is in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. I never really think to explore other parts of New York because I live here, but that can be a mistake. There are some really awesome things to see around in my home state. I spent a few nights again at my parent's cabin (for a total of 4 times this year) and then set off for a couple of days chasing waterfalls. I love this particular image because it feels so much different than most of the others I've taken and I think it really captures the mood of the place. It worked out pretty well because the path in this photo is closed at that time of year so I was forced to take the path overlooking it. If that hadn't happened I wouldn't have seen this.

December
The last month of the year and the only photo I posted that was actually taken in December. I came here specifically for a shot involving that concrete wall thingy but the scene had changed a lot from what I remembered. I was happy with the composition I ended up with, and the contrast between the snow and that red algae (at least I'm pretty sure that's algae) was really cool. I honestly almost didn't share it because the focus is slightly off from where I wanted it to be and I didn't realize that when I was there. I'm starting to learn to be okay with minor imperfections as long as it works as a whole.

It was a great year for me, in fact I can pretty easily say this was my best year yet. I've done a lot of things that I've wanted to for a very long time, and I've never felt better about the path my life is on now. Thank you all for the support, and have a great 2018!

I'm starting to sell prints of some of my images, currently 5 of them shown here are available on my website here. If there are others you are interested in please let me know.

The Finger Lakes November 2017

James Griffiths December 9, 2017

Overlooking the gorge trail in Watkins Glen

I was in upstate New York the week after Thanksgiving spending some time at my parent's cabin and exploring some areas that I haven't been to before. My original plan was to go north to either the Niagara Falls area or the Thousand Islands, but it looked like rain in both of those areas. I did some more research and decided on a few parks in the Finger Lakes Region, an area that I had never been to before and felt like I should.

A major reason I love taking landscape photos is that it gets me out into some beautiful locations and helps me appreciate them more than I would otherwise. When I force myself to focus on finding the best way to show a location I start to notice details that I otherwise wouldn't. Because of that I usually want to be at great places in great light, and today that was kind of a problem because I was trying to visit 3 parks in the area. My reasoning for that was that I knew some of the trails would be closed and they all seemed pretty accessible, so I didn't think I would need much time to get to the icons (mostly waterfalls) in the parks. This would also be kind of a scouting trip, giving me a good idea of what I would want to come back to.

I decided to drive to Buttermilk Falls first because it was on the way to the other parks, and from what I could tell this looked like a nice spot but maybe not as photogenic as my other options. It is a really cool waterfall, and very easy to get to. It may look like I hiked into the woods to get this selfie, but I'm actually about 10 feet from the parking lot. The name of this waterfall seems to fit too, the water flows smoothly across all of the rocks giving a milky appearance. I did take some photos here that I'll have to go through in more detail, but mid day light (and it was right about noon) doesn't often work out for what I like to capture and they really weren't that interesting to me.

I left Buttermilk and decided that the park I was most excited about was Watkins Glen, and when the realization that it's that time of year when the sun sets around 4:30 I thought I should just go there and possibly see the last park the next day. It was about a half hour away, and when I got to it there were only 2 other cars in the parking lot. That's something I really like about exploring these places so late in the season, yes it's colder but you can't beat the serenity. A disadvantage of it being this late in the season is that the fun trails might be closed. At Watkins Glen, which is basically a big gorge leading down to Seneca Lake, the trail running through the gorge was closed. They actually have the few entrances to the trail (which are all stone staircases) locked up. I was a little disappointed, even though I was partially expecting it, and considered just going around the blockades but ended up trying out the trail on the north side of the gorge. Apparently this trail (Indian Head I think) would have some decent views down into the gorge. It was the early afternoon at this point and I figured with how wooded the area was the light would get to where I wanted in a few hours. The whole trail is a little over a mile and is flat most of the way so it was pretty easy to scout out all of the interesting spots that I would want to come back to when the sun was lower. Of course I did get a little confused when the trail seemed to randomly go through this graveyard here:

A seemingly random cemetery on the path in Watkins Glen

But further down I did find a few overlooks that I liked. This ended up being my favorite:

Look at that smile, you can almost see it. You can also see the pathway below that is part of the gorge trail. When I came back to this spot in lower light and composed the shot that's at the top of this page I was kind of glad that the gorge trail was closed. Sure I would have loved to go down there and still plan to in the future, I'm sure I would have found some great shots. But if it was open I never would have thought to take this trail and I never would have taken that image, which I was really pleased with. It's kind of a different style than I usually shoot and has a different feel to it that I love.

I took that photo a couple of hours before sunset, which in my experience is a great time to photograph a forest. That's technically a while before the golden hour, but when you're in a forest the golden hour sun is often too low to get through all of the trees. About an hour before golden hour the lower sun will still create some pretty awesome light bouncing through the forest. Because I took that shot at my favorite spot that long before sunset I still had a chance to take some shots from a bridge that overlooked the gorge, my second favorite spot which I still have to decide on the photo for (that process can take me a while and I always post the photos I'm sure of first).

By the time I got back to my car I still had more than an hour left before sunset, and the last park I wanted to go to, Taughannock Falls, was a little more than a half hour away. From the images I saw on Google it also seemed more open than Watkins Glen so I thought actual golden hour, as opposed to my forest golden hour the hour before, would work well here. It would be a little tight to get to the park and walk to the waterfall in time, but I was optimistic.

Taughannock Falls from the main overlook

As you can see from the photo there's me, there's a waterfall, and there's a blown out sky meaning that I was there before dark. This was from a parking lot overlook, it's actually an awesome view of the falls and I would have taken some more shots here if I wasn't still hoping to make it to the base of the falls before the it got dark. So I hopped back in my car and drove down to the start of that trail (the end of which you can see in the lower right corner of the above photo). This trail turned out to be less than a mile and was even marked as wheelchair accessible, so very flat and some great views of the valley made by this river. The water level was low too so you could walk out onto parts of the rock river bed if you wanted to. I made it to the falls probably ten minutes before sunset, which due to the nature of those giant rock walls I wasn't going to see, but I knew what I wanted and this was the perfect time to get it. I didn't care about the colors in the sky because I wasn't even planning on having much sky in my composition, I just wanted the colors in the foreground and a really smooth waterfall with some soft light. At this time of day I was able to get a 15 second exposure and the only filter I used was my polarizer. Because there was still some light bouncing around the valley the colors, though much cooler, were still picking up nicely. I felt that I made it at the perfect time.

Here I am at the bottom, you can see my phone bumped my ISO up pretty high and lost a lot of color detail.

I took my photo and sat there for a while enjoying the water flowing through the quickly darkening valley. I walked back in the dark, taking a detour on the dry parts of the riverbed, and got to my car just as it started to rain. I didn't know it was going to rain but it kind of worked out perfectly because I got to see the places I planned on and felt I got some pretty cool shots. Originally I was going to spend another night in the area, and maybe I should have, but this gives me more of a reason to come back and maybe focus on just one of the parks. I'm probably going to go back to all 3 eventually, but definitely Watkins Glen when the gorge trail is open, and I know I could spend a lot of time in the riverbed leading up to Taughannock Falls.