So the initial plan during the past 4th of July weekend was to spend three nights at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming photographing the night sky and Milky Way. I am teaching a nighttime photo workshop there next spring and needed more sample photos to show potential students the amazing opportunities that are possible.
After 2 hugely successful nights in the Tetons, and with a lot of cloud cover in Jackson, I decided to travel to Yellowstone for the third night of shooting. My girlfriend Whitney and I packed up the RV and left the Virginian Lodge RV Park at 6pm and headed north. And fortunate for me because the further north we travelled, the less clouds we encountered.
After photographing the Milky Way above Old Faithful and a couple other geysers, we headed to Grand Prismatic Spring in the Midway Geyser Basin. It was cold, windy, we were all by ourselves, it was pitch dark, and there were no clouds!
We walked along the boardwalk to the top and I started photographing the Grand Prismatic Spring. Because of the cold and the wind, there was too much steam coming off the pool to see it very well and get a shot I had in my mind. So I started looking for other opportunities, and when I turned around to look down the boardwalk we had just walked from I instantly saw it and went to work.
Having been out in the dark now for 45 minutes our eyes were fully adjusted to the night, and it was unbelievable the amount of stars we saw and how close they appeared to us! Like we could just reach out and touch them.
This photo, titled “Heavenly View”, is one of my favorite photos from that trip.
Each time I look at it I am transported back to that magical night with A Sky Full of Stars – it was such a Heavenly View! P.S. – thanks Coldplay for helping me with the title for this photo :).
It was a night I won’t soon forget.