How a trip to Grand Teton National Park ended with no sunrise or sunset… just simple winter photography.

On my recent photo workshop trip, we woke up at 4:30am and made our way from the Sky Mountain Lodge in Victor, Idaho through Jackson, Wyoming into Grand Teton National Park.

Our intention was to get a beautiful sunrise featuring alpenglow of the majestic Teton mountains. Alpenglow occurs when the tips of the mountains are glowing bright orange – a result of the sun that has already slipped over the horizon. For the Teton mountains, alpenglow occurs minutes before the official sunrise.

So instead of getting shots of a white snow-covered mountain contrasted with the bright colors of sunrise, I embraced the white canvas of the snow covered land capturing simple winter photography.

Most of my photos for this post are black and white. The reason I changed them into black and white was because I felt with what little color was present in the picture became a distraction… this is simple winter photography after all.

Composition is key when it comes to simple winter photography. Anyone can take pictures of snowy trees with a winter landscape behind them, but what makes the difference is the composition. Always have your horizon lines on the rule of thirds. Or better, find different more intriguing ways for this, such as diagonal alignment.

While in Jackson, Wyoming, we were visiting local fine art photography galleries, but were interrupted by two moose in the town square. While some of our photographers got yelled at by bystanders for getting too close, I got this awesome shot which sums up Jackson Tourism: Wildlife photography.

DON’T CLOSE THAT SHUTTER YET…

Here is an article by Nikon with some great tips for more simple winter photography.

-CAB