I planned for this article to be a collection of my favorite black and white photos from 2020 but a few things interfered with that plan. First, the collection turned out to be smaller than I expected. And, although I like all of the photos here and think they are worthy of including in my black and white photo collections, only a few feel like they will qualify as “favorites” as time goes on. I also found time to process some photos from previous years as well, broadening the collection beyond 2020. So, below, you will find some recently taken and recently processed black and white photos, with a few stories about our travels during 2020 to add context. I hope you enjoy the photos and the stories - and I hope that 2021 is off to a good start for you, despite the complex circumstances of these times.
Collection of Plants, 2013 to 2019 - Since the pandemic started, getting through my backlog of unprocessed photographs has been my top priority. I am working on collections of photos that I hope to use in future projects, including new/revised ebooks and eventually a physical book or two. I had been making steady progress on finishing up my 2020 files until I injured two toes and my mid-foot in early January. With the need to completely rest my foot for an extended period of time, plus the overall malaise associated with the pandemic, all of the political upheaval in the United States, and weathering the first anniversary of my dad’s death, processing photos taken during long hikes in favorite places on happy days was not helping my mood. So, I switched to working through my collection of plants and found a lot more joy in these subjects. This small collection represents plants found in gardens across Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, Atlanta, California (northern and southern), and British Columbia.
Sandstorm, Death Valley National Park - Most of the time, I gravitate toward a slow, quiet, and low-pressure style of photography where I can just wander around and see what might catch my attention. Photographing during a sandstorm is essentially the opposite experience - uncomfortable, dynamic conditions with a constant edge of intensity, exhilaration, and pressure. And I struggle with photographing sand dunes in the first place. So, the fact that everything came together for this photo pretty much the moment I stepped on this dune - finding a decent composition before the cloud of swirling sand cleared - felt like a small photography miracle. Two or three frames later, the swirl of sand that added depth and texture to the mountains was gone, leaving a hazy, clear blue sky behind for the rest of the day.
Sandswept, Death Valley National Park - On the same day I took the photo above, I had headed out to these sand dunes with my friend Jennifer Renwick. We left the car a little after lunchtime and intended to stay out until sunset if the winds kept up. Even during the short days of winter, this meant that we would be out for about 6 hours. Walking around sand dunes, even short, squat ones like these, is a lot of effort, especially with a full camera bag, and on this day, the wind added to the ever-present feeling of mental and physical exhaustion. My eyes were feeling scratched up and my forever weak feet were tired from covering a lot of ground. Sand had coated my sunscreen-covered face and had formed a gritty film on my teeth (tiniest pandemic silver lining: my fancy masks will be in my camera bag for all future trips out onto windy dunes). Stopping to have my one meager snack, I wondered why exactly I do this photography thing. Why can’t I just sit at the pool like a normal person on vacation? Then I saw this intricate repeating pattern on the side of a massive, incredibly steep dune and felt good about the day again.
Spring Sparkles, Colorado - Just like the state of Colorado, our aspen trees have four seasons of beauty. Winter brings lacy patterns among the trunks and branches of bare trees. Fall brings the jewel tones of autumn. Summer brings a sea of deep green dotted against bright white trunks. And spring brings thin translucent leaves that sparkle when the sun shines through them. Here, I photographed straight up into a tree with a pretty set of branches to fill the frame, with the bright leaves sparkling against a clear, much darker sky.
Interwoven (Above), Spring Frills (Left Below), and Forest Fern (Right Below), Colorado - I took the photo above, along with the two below, during one of our first outings after the pandemic began. The time served as a helpful reminder about how a single afternoon spent wandering around a favorite place can offer a reset that lasts for much longer. For these photos, I sat down in a small sheltered meadow, carefully watching my movements to keep from doing any damage, and photographed the plants around me for an hour or two - with no agenda other than to let me mind wander away from what had been a few very challenging months. I tried some new approaches, including a few attempts at less literal photographs of the plants - striving for an appreciation of their beauty and form without my normal obsession with perfection.
Signs of Spring, Colorado - I took this photo in my favorite field of corn lilies (a different forest in a different mountain range from the corn lily photos above). We return to this spot often because the plants grow so densely, creating opportunities to photograph collections of the plants using many different perspectives. Each fall, this field of dense, robust plants will be nothing more than stubs, with the plants eaten to the nub by the cattle that graze on these public lands. It is a small miracle of nature that these plants keep coming back year after year, despite the heavy toll grazing takes on this land during the summer and early fall.
Outlines, Southwest Colorado - Just some clouds and blue sky reflecting on a lake whose surface was in perpetual motion with the wind. We stopped here to photograph some bare trees but I turned my attention momentarily to these patterns - and then back to the trees and back here again. Watching ripples on a lake is a perfect mountain meditation for a busy mind like mine, with the patterns changing from moment to moment in a way that can keep my attention away from the other worries of the day. Although quite colorful, I liked the deep contrast I could pull out from the RAW file with a black and white presentation.
Channels, Yellowstone National Park - Sometime in early 2019, we made camping reservations in Yellowstone for September 2020. While we much prefer to travel without reservations or much planning at all, that style of travel is quickly becoming a thing of the past - at least for busy national parks - so we make reservations and hope we want to visit the place once the scheduled time rolls around. By September, we were so happy to have the reservations because they nudged us to figure out a safe, responsible way to travel after our longest stint without photography-related travel since we met. We could prepare two weeks of food, bring lots of clean laundry, research some off-the-beaten path trails, and mostly keep to ourselves by camping in our Airstream. Although we spent some time in the popular geyser basins when the crowds were light (photo above), we mostly focused on hiking to places in the park we hadn’t visited before, covering 96 miles over our 12 day vacation. Although Yellowstone’s backcountry scenery isn’t quite as dramatic as the rest of the Rocky Mountains, the small scenes were ubiquitous and varied. Except for the geothermal features, I had previously - and wrongly I now realize - dismissed this landscape as less interesting than the others that surround it.
Water Garden, Yellowstone - While walking around our campsite to stretch our legs, we crossed a bridge and found an extensive garden of aquatic plants growing in the river below. The sun was shining brightly on the plants, adding depth and contrast, with the ripples above adding texture and dynamism. At first glance, the overall scene doesn’t look like it holds much potential for photography and most people passing by were clearly confused by what we were doing with our cameras hanging precariously over the edge of the bridge. This experience holds a few good reminders for photographing small scenes: beauty can be found in what appear to be the most mundane of scenes, harsh light can work well for some subjects, and don’t let strangers (or other photographers…) gawking, staring, and judging stop you from creating a photograph.
Reflecting Grasses, Yellowstone - At this spot, we stopped to photograph a field of frosted grasses. After finishing up, I paused to enjoy this patch of grass reflecting in a steaming, geothermally fed pond. I liked the repetition of the spent flower at the end of each grass - a sign of a season passed but a subject still filled with beauty.
Across the Basin, Yellowstone National Park - The last place I wanted to be while in Yellowstone during a pandemic was on the surprisingly crowded viewing platform for the Old Faithful Geyser. Luckily, the chill in the morning air kept most people off the surrounding boardwalks so we focused our attention there instead. I hadn’t checked the geyser predictions for that morning so it was a bit of serendipity to look across the geyser basin and see Old Faithful erupt from a quiet corner of the boardwalk. The geysers and geothermal features are much more impressive in the colder weather of autumn and winter, as the plume of steam fills more visual space in the chilled air.
Plateau Ponderosa, Zion National Park - After safely traveling to Yellowstone in September, we decided to take another RV-based trip to Zion National Park since it is a place we know well and felt confident we could find places where we would be mostly alone. Aside from biking into the busy Zion Canyon with full camera packs a few times, we focused on more remote trails and saw maybe a dozen people over the course of three weeks. Spending time at the higher elevations in the park means spending time with ponderosa pines so I dedicated attention to photographing them - the carpets of needles and cones on the ground, the intricate patterns in their bark, and their graceful boughs falling overhead.
Thank you for taking the time to look through these photos and read my little stories about them. If you have a favorite photo from the collection, you can let me know in the comments. After taking a few months off from posting online, I hope to have more to share over the next few months. Thank you for staying tuned during my period of silence. :)