Greetings and Welcome!

I've been photographing Wyoming and all of its wild residents for my entire 38 year career, and it never gets old or tiring. If the good Lord gave me several lifetimes I could not accomplish all that I dream of or visit all of the places in this state I've called home for 57 years.

I have two websites currently that showcase my work at www.jerrygeist.com and www.wyomingpanorama.com. There you will see galleries of landscape images, Wyoming's wildlife and wildflowers and special galleries of my favorite place, Yellowstone National Park and my favorite large mammal, Bison Bison or the buffalo as many call them. There is a special gallery dedicated to this fascinating creature and I've even made a special tribute print called 'Tatanka and the Iron Horse - the Decimations Haunting Specter' remembering the near extinction of this most significant symbol of the west. My intrigue for this wonderful animal will continue for as long as I can make trips to photograph them.

You can read all about my work, my career and individual pictures by visiting the website, but here I will share with you special places that have particular interest to me, see how I travel and shoot my images, read about some of my past and present experiences, meet friends that have shared special times with me, hear my ramblings about equipment, and hopefully respond to some of your comments.

Well, that is enough of an introduction. Welcome to my world - Images of Wyoming.

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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Ready for Autumn

Many of you know that summer is my least favorite time to be making images. The light tends to be flat and boring to me. I much prefer the change of seasons in the early spring or fall and the wonderful transitions from fall to winter. Well, the weather has cooled off dramatically and the distinctive chill of autumn is affecting my moods and stimulating me to get out of that summer slump that affects me each year.

I've spent much of the summer working at the gallery, meeting new folks and selling images, especially my large panoramas. It has been a good year overall and the large prints are really garnering a lot of attention. So from that standpoint, I've had a good summer, but, it's just not the same as getting out into the field and satisfying those creative urges that start to surface at this time of the year.

The day before yesterday, I had a few brief hours of time to myself, so I packed up the cameras that had been sitting idle for over 3 months and headed to the hills. I've had an image in my head that I wanted to make that has been haunting me for nearly 13 years. It is an image of all things, pine cones. I remembered a place where a single tree on a hillside had over the years depositied thousands of pine cones at its base. The first time I tried to photograph the scene, I was teaching photo workshops. I made an image with a 20mm wide angle lens that showed the vast numbers of cones, but because of the necessary depth of field that I wanted, even at f32, I could not get good front to back sharpness in the image.

I knew what equipment I would need but at the time did not possess it. That has all changed with the new Canon system I currently use. Could I find that place once again after all these years? I was going to try. At the time I could drive within 75 yards of the location, but that too has changed. The forest service closed the road that I needed to use. I could only get to within about 3/4 of a mile of where I needed to be, so I parked the vehicle, picked up one very large camera bag full of three tilt/shift lenses and my camera with numerous accessories, then I shouldered my very heavy Gitzo 1505 tripod with a Graf Studio ball head attached. The tripod alone weighs well over 14 pounds and the bag another 27 pounds. That was quite a load to carry that distance, especially after a summer of basically sitting in a gallery or in front of my computer. I made it to the area OK, but the return trip was exhausting.

Well, my body was struggling but my mind did not fail me. I found that lone tree in the forest after only about a 10 minute search, and it was just like I had remembered, only more pine cones had been depositied in the subsequent years. It was great. I pulled out all of those lenses and tried many compositions and different perspectives. The tilt/shift lenses worked like magic, allowing me to do what I couldn't do before. I got everything that I had hoped for. After about an hour photographing this special place, I packed up the gear and headed back to the vehicle.

I was very tired after the mini-trek, but was energized and ready for more images that I've held in my head for the entire summer. Now I find myself planning for trips to make some more very special images. My time in the gallery will diminish until winter sets in and then I'll be stocked with many more new images, Lord willing.

Summer is over and now the busy season for this photographer starts. I'm excited, energized and ready to go. Can't wait to hear those Elk bugling! This is the stuff my dreams are made of, but now I get to put legs to those dreams. See you in the wilderness of Big, Wonderful Wyoming.