Sometimes in landscape photography, you can get a completely different scene just by moving to a different location.  This is why professional landscape photographers recommend surveying the area and taking a few steps in various directions to make sure that you’ve got the best shot you can get.  Lots of times this advice will yield you a better photograph.  Every so often, it will yield another photograph which is just as good.  This is the story of how that happened for me.  Check out the tranquility and meditation I found in Yellowstone.

On another trip through Yellowstone National Park, we decided to drive by Yellowstone Lake.  We were with some friends and their young daughters.  The girls were experiencing the park for the first time.  The wonders of the park were blowing their minds.

On one particular stop, we decided to check out a turnout alongside the lake.  The older 2 girls got out and were enjoying themselves with trying to skip some rocks across the surface of the lake for a few minutes.  I, of course, had out my camera and was working on getting a shot of the calm blue expanse in front of me.

While the girls were enjoying themselves, I decided that my composition needed something extra.  It just lacked that special something to me.  I noticed that there were lots of expanding ripples from the rocks which were not actually skipping and I decided to incorporate those into my composition.  They did add that extra something to the overall photo I was working on.

Out in the distance you can barely see where our next destination was.  There’s this narrow strip of land which cuts completely across this tiny section of the lake.  That’s why the water here was so calm.  It’s cut off from the rest of the wind-swept turbulence in the main body of the lake.

After I was done, we piled back in the car and drove further around Yellowstone Lake.  We found the isthmus depicted above and lots of people out on it.  Since there was parking, we stopped to check out the location for ourselves.  It was also good to get out and stretch our legs for a few yards of a hike.

What a different this rather small change of location gave us.  You can still see the same mountains in the background with this second shot as you can see in the first.  However, now you see the waves and motion of the main lake.  It’s almost as active as the waves at the seashore are though perhaps a little less foamy.

When I got back, I found myself with a rather unusual dilemma.  I had 2 equally good shots to work with of the same lake.  Since I didn’t see any reason not to, I decided to work with both of them.  The first shows off a very tranquil and peaceful reflection (titled “Tranquility”) while the other is more meditative and deep (titled “Meditation”).

If you’d like to purchase fine art prints of either of these photos, then you can click on either (they are links to their respective pages) or you can follow this link to our online store.  Buy your fine art prints today.