A Photograph: Travertine. Yellowstone. 1997.

About the Photograph

Travertine, Yellowstone National Park. 1995.

When I embarked on my digital national park project, I assumed Yellowstone would be a part of it. I didn’t realize how significant a trip it would be and that it would produce one of the most iconic photographs of the project. By the summer of year two of the project, I was on my way back to Yellowstone.

Returning to Yellowstone, this time with my family and the fancy new high falluten’ digital camera rig. The dive is long. It’s good to be going back. It is very dear to look into the back seats and see my kids, active one minute, sleeping the next. Mary scouts ahead for playgrounds, reads AAA Tour books for things to notice as we pass. The kids are young, but will remember some parts of this trip. Sara more so, Matthew maybe the highlights. It’s good to have the family along.

At Mammoth, I spent the morning walking the wooden walkway up the travertine hillside. I made a few nice photographs. Mary had been entertaining the kids and it was getting time for lunch. I came down the hill, we had a nice lunch, and then went to a museum complete with William Henry Jackson Portfolio.

I had given it shot, but I kept feeling like I had not captured the magic I felt. It was Mary’s birthday and we wanted to spend the next morning at Old Faithful so we had some driving and camping to set up. We packed up to head south. As we were turning one of the last curves before the travertine disappeared, I saw this dead tree emerging from the layered travertine. I looked over at Mary, she saw the earnestness in my eyes and nodded, “go ahead, I’ll watch kids a little longer.” That was the photograph of the entire trip.

This photograph was another exploration of light-filled pastel color, a journey I began in 1979. Shortly after the trip, I was starting experiment on the Iris printer and watercolor paper like the BFK Rives I had used for alternative processes in college. The look became addictive to me, eventually leading me to work with the German mill Hahnemühle to develop the Museum Etching paper I use to this day.

I’ve been blessed with many comments on this print over the years, the most common being that it looks like a painting. I choose to take that as a well intentioned complement

It has become the iconic image from this national parks project and has been featured on the mock up book as its cover.

Printed with pigment inkjet printer on sized cotton paper with no optical brighteners.