1 Week in Wyoming

Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I don't know dude. Sometimes when you're in a creative rut It's nice to just get the hell away, and I do something different I suppose. Despite what my therapist says, sometimes it is good to run from my problems It's been failure after failure for me lately with my photography And I kind of just needed to slow down and try making some work that would actually be good for the portfolio Luckily a group of friends that I travel with frequently presented me with the opportunity to do so. That's right I'd be joining Caleb, Birgit, and David again for another road trip This time through Wyoming to see what the frontier has to offer, and I swear to Carhartt, and we weren't just going to take a picture of this f***ing barn But in order to slow down sometimes you got to go really fast So I hopped on my electric robot Explosion horse and hit the road down to LAX. After lane splitting so hard like Luke Skywalker when he lane split the s*** out Of the Death Star, I finally arrived at the airport and met up with Kaylee After catching the electric robot explosion sky horse We finally landed on the open range, the Grand Tetons, and after looking up what that translates to I felt like this might actually be my kind of place after all With several hours to kill before David and Birgit get in, we hitched our wagons into the park And I was pretty excited to be on the ground and you know doing such a good job at b-roll Once we were in the park I knocked out a pretty cool video about shooting some aerochrome in 120 that the one and only Peter McKinnon had sent me. Unfortunately, I f***ed the roll up because that's my brand So it seemed like I still needed to break free of this Photographic rut that I was in All right, what's up? I just finished shooting some aerochrome and now we are Rejoining the main storyline How exciting. Anyway after doing the usual, you know bare minimum amount of work We decided it was time to treat ourselves to a little sampling of heart disease I grabbed one of the three cameras I brought for the trip, the Canon WP1 And after Caleb got uncomfortably close to me, I loaded up its ass with some equipment It's so weird filming around people Gotta get used to it Technique Did you get that? No After eating enough beans to make sure the rental car would never smell the same ever again We walked around Jackson Hole for a bit to you know, kill some time Unfortunately, we never found a guy named Time But eventually we did stumble upon the town brothel and decided to pimp some film as I felt my mojo was slowly starting to return to me This is a pretty good start. This photo is about as good as it gets at least for me The colors are perfect And I just love the I guess juxtaposition of this kid probably bored as hell and slouched over against this like bright fun energetic backdrop I took several other photos, but they never quite hit the mark that I was going for Truth be told the WP1 was kind of acting up and skipping every like two and a half frames the latch on those things is just it's hot garbage like your mixtape and is apparently crucial to the operation of this camera when I Opened up the latch compartment on that camera. I found that the latch itself was broken in two different places So I think mystery solved on that one. Anyway to deal with the fact that that shit was malfunctioning left and right We decided to get beer and overextend our own malfunctioning livers This hotel was pretty cool and the front door guy let us wander around for a bit after we you know Gave him cigarettes too bad. My camera was in the shitter Yeah, I kind of want my cigarettes back With beer getting David almost there and the lighting getting pretty backlit We headed back into the park and found a scenic turnoff the perfect chance to pull my Hasselblad back out and pop off some Chronic, that's right. Came here 400 push two stops through a splash of orange because that's about the only time it looks good After making love to the car I sat down and reviewed my strategy for this trip It was a pretty simple to a 16 backs for the Hasselblad system I meant that I could shoot two different film stocks at any time by simply swapping the backs out sounds pretty simple, right? No, bitch, it was not that simple This strategy leaves a lot of room to to mess things up when you switch the backs You got to change the meter ISO back and forth every time and if you shoot with filters like I do you got to swap Them out every time too. Anyway, whatever Kodak Ektachrome and can't mirror 400 We're gonna be the the lookbook for me for this go-around There's a big-ass plane sounds like it My battery's dead in the Meter I got replace it. This replacement battery is also low. So we're just gonna hand meter for now f8 160 That's kind of nice actually After firing off literally only one mediocre ass shot We went to go get David and Birgit yee-haw cowboy with the David and Birgit cargo acquired We had a ways to go that evening to get up to the Yellowstone area where we essentially kind of start off But you know, we're already getting pretty pumped about the light and by we I mean David This shot is pretty good It's simple and moody and you know, what more can you really ask for it? I like I was finally hitting my groove. I was in a good mood and nothing could possibly go wrong Might be fine. These things are built like tanks, right? With knife all upon us. We finally reached our place of rest and so did our upstairs neighbors, I guess Day two The next morning it was time to get our collective shit together It was time to actually do stuff and not just sit in a car for three hours telling stories from our glorious prom days After grabbing some bean juice. I slapped my extra phone back on the hassy and walked around looking for you know Photographic inspiration and luckily I found some right across the way was an abandoned hotel bar thing Which was totally not strange at all to be sleeping 60 feet away from The shot is pretty great. I love how layered it is and the colors are they're fine I guess sky is nice and dark as well as the lake. Thanks to a polarizer on the front of the lens It's a nice little detail here with a couple walking their dog, too After all that it was time to head into Yellowstone slowly and I was totally living out my dream and pixie insta-girly travel influencer lifestyle All right, we got everything we needed at our first location We were battling with gorgeous scenery draped in awful midday light We can turn midday light into mid daddy light if you actually know what you're doing Unfortunately, I don't but I grabbed some black and white and some color and thread and we're searching for it. Anyway, I Popped a few shots here and there but nothing really notable except maybe this one I really dig the framing the colors and you know, of course the subject matter I'm right here dog As we went along headed who gives a where we found a herd of bison and collectively decided we wanted to ride them like Horsies after a park ranger on site told us that was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard We just decided to take pictures from afar instead and totally pretend like that idea was just a joke After that we started to get our first glimpse of the hot springs that characterize Yellowstone like landmines on the western front I packed the hassy and some ectochrome for this location It would almost be sacrilegious to shoot these, you know, beautiful prismatic Springs on something like black and white It's getting destroyed All right now we're heating up and it's not just the super volcano underneath our feet ready to blow up the world This shot is pretty good. It's very simple yet effective and the colors are fantastic I don't normally love the color blue in my work, but I think it works pretty well here, you know darkened dramatically by the polarizer Did you though that's Old Faithful and we missed it Defucking the tree Well, you know it was time to get the most touristy shit out of the way and see Old Faithful do her thing Here's a shot of some people waiting it out I really tried hard to be stealthy here and nab this shot and I think it might be one of the better ones to be honest But while we wait for Old Faithful, let's cut to commercial break and hear a word from today's sponsor Squarespace, let's not kid each other I'm a photographer and you might also be a photographer and what do photographers do when they own a photography business? They sell prints So when you go to set up your online print shop Why not make it as easy as possible on yourself and use? 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If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at Squarespace comm slash grainy days And if you use the code grainy days at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase eventually Old Faithful did the thing and you know Everyone applauded which is kind of bullshit if you ask me because when I do the same thing with diet sprite in a restaurant Everyone's just kind of annoyed. Let's be honest at this point The whole world and their grandma has a shot of Old Faithful and their grandma probably did it better than me So I kind of wanted to do something different We tried to park ourselves away from the crowds and find a unique way to photograph the damn thing Of course for me that probably meant color infrared And you know what? I actually really like the shots especially this one the small river here kind of acts as a leading line to the subject itself And of course the violent red is always a nice albeit aggressive touch Fresh out of Ektachrome it was time for more Ektachrome because surprise surprise I'm not adventurous anymore and the light inside of me is dead of the 16 exposure rule of Ektachrome I got six keepers and I don't know maybe one portfolio shot, but that might be kind of a stretch Jason what are you putting in the camera today? Good question Caleb today. I'm actually loading in some Kodak Ektachrome E100 What does the E stand for? Let's not pretend like we're like this Anyway missing my Xbox dearly I was forced to find beauty in whatever this shit was instead the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone I Won't lie to you. I've shot here before but I've never been able to produce a photo that I thought was good I don't know. The images always come out looking like every photo ever taken at this spot and that just isn't exactly what I wanted Here's a shot and it's fine. The colors are popping and you know painterly which is cool But the ridgeline kind of gets lost in the background here. So next, please This shot is a bit of an improvement I suppose the colors are also quite nice, but this tree here in the foreground is giving me straight-up kidney stones BTS footage of your you guys That'd be the most boring channel I think we would be cancelled right away Ektachrome back off Cantmir back on All right. What can I say? We got pretty lucky with this one We just pulled off at some random scenic overlook that would probably look a little bit prettier if there's like a Chili's somewhere in there But whatever there was a super cool Winding river with the Sun positioned perfectly over it and it made the photography kind of a cakewalk I figured cantmir would probably get the job done pretty effectively because it can totally bring, you know High contrast scenes to their knees like some sort of photon dominatrix Yeah, this is probably one of the best photos from the trip. It is also currently in my phone background The keto dog, okay Getting up or snooze sunrise or sunset Inside or outside After dinner the light finally touched down and created this like blue hour of glory next to the lake with no tripod in hand I settled my you know Dented and beat up hassy on the railing and shot a long exposure of the light reflected off the restaurant And yeah, it's a keeper for sure. This is where slide film prevails. I think you know low contrast blue hour It's almost like a cheat code and I was totally prepared to you know Left bumper right bumper X left right trigger the shot There's so many mosquitoes out here. How does anybody shoot in these conditions? The next morning I mean morning damn autocorrect. Oh wait, this is an improvised voiceover. There's no autocorrect Then what the hell just happened there? Whatever the next morning we were excited to get back out there and see you know a bit more of Red Dead Redemption, too but in real life But there's this one guy from the Midwest whose his subset is kind of cool They added videos now and they added like a separate podcast Yeah, they added video You can add video clips, but it's still We popped in town for a second to pick up supplies, you know, like bear traps rope and raccoon hats It was gonna be a pretty wild day I decided to load up some more ectochrome the likes of which I was burning through at an impressive or maybe non impressive speed Depending on how you think the video is going so far of the 16 exposures on the last roll of ectochrome I got about four keepers, but one portfolio shot. Frankly. Those numbers are downright awful. I can do better Oh, maybe I don't know. I do seem to be getting worse All right, this shot is balling out the rest were kind of ass But this shot is doing something with the colors that just kind of works I can't quite put my finger on it huge shout out to the circular polarizer for cutting down the you know, the blue sky again We stopped at mammoth hot springs first off and this was another location I've shot twice before but never could quite get it to look good I don't know why I thought this time would be different But I brought both color and black and white and I just decided to let the location speak to me in the moment Which doesn't really mean anything I guess No, I guess that wasn't even a secret Filters Anyway, I took this shot twice and I don't know I figured it out later the first on black and white and it's fine Whatever, but then I slapped the ectochrome on and I got this which I think is quite good It's the colors really above anything classic blue and orange complementary colors that trick your eye into thinking you got something magical It's too hot for this right now. I Don't know if I even got anything good. Once again after putting in a minimal amount of work We decided to treat ourselves and go swimming someplace somewhere Damn, that was so cinematic the first a quick calf reveal on this channel and then you know a quick infrared shot Okay, make it two infrared shots at this waterfall named after what sounds like a pretty bad STD Anyway our first Geothermal swim spot was closed down because I guess someone tried to cook a whole ass rotisserie chicken down there Eventually, we did find a more secluded spot and I don't know I mean, what do you do when you're in a park right local national or otherwise? That's right. You get naked and drink beer doesn't have to be in that order though With good evening light on the way We hopped in the car and headed to a lake somewhere in the mountains that some locals told us about which kind of sounds like The premise for any good slasher movie, but what the hell YOLO So the 16 shots of cam here 400 pushed two stops with an orange filter I got about eight keepers and one maybe two portfolio shots. Maybe I can never make up my mind on my own photos We're pretty high elevation I could just sell my Mamiya 7-1 With no time to waste and us being natural time wasters. We headed deeper into the backcountry That was flames No, you didn't get it Didn't have auto-exposure Eventually we made it to the lake but it was kind of in this like valley and the light was more or less gone like my childhood innocence Actually this house before it Works This guy knows what I'm talking about There's 1 15th of a second Oh Jumping away. Oh, it's still there Anyway after beer get did a downright filthy Tokyo drift back into the same spot from earlier just now with even Beautifully or lighting I whipped out the chrome and hope for the best despite, you know the low ISO These photos aren't really of anything worthwhile. The colors are just nice, but that's just one piece of the puzzle oftentimes With gusto still in our veins or I guess caffeine because we don't know when to cut ourselves off We decided to head back into town and do some night photography This photo is pretty solid I do love the colors and of course the detail of the silhouetted tree here back against the you know Whatever light was left on the horizon. I do wish the green neon wasn't so blown But I don't know sometimes you take what you can get with slide film and frankly I wasn't really expecting any of these to turn out Another lucky one. I do love how the lobby is against this like dark void in the background You might ask how does one meter slide film at night like this? And don't ask me Perhaps the best one of the night highlights are a little blown but to get that blue hour glow in the background I think it was a little bit worth it I honestly do not know if any of these shots are gonna turn out making it as hard as I possibly can on myself shooting ectochrome and Doing it with a warming filter. I don't have high expectations for these but I'm enjoying it. Does that count for anything? Why are so many people like scared of me? They're fine. There's hands for your legs So should we eat these all Is that what that is I don't think they would bring something to market that shit. God, it smells like blueberry Well, it's like cereal, yeah These are the extreme ghost pepper ones. Okay, three out of four hot. The taste is better than the blueberry There's a spicy dill pickle. Yeah, right. Yeah, let's do it. Are they green? No 785 oh my god, that's disgusting I'm on like I'm on like like three out of 800 pickle flavor. Oh, it is even worse with beer. How do they even make? Dude they make the blueberry. Yeah, just like a cat. Maybe I just let it hit the back of my throat. I have a feeling All right, this is probably gonna be the hottest how many fire fire emojis does it have for four and it says hottest That was a bad choice Your visions blurred too, right day four Now almond hungover the next day it was time to continue our brat summer I don't really know what that means. But yeah sure, whatever That day we were saying adios to Yellowstone and heading through the park back to the Grand Tetons But first we had to stop at this, you know abandoned rickety ass house. We passed the day prior being early and Half dead or half asleep. I can never tell I couldn't make up my mind on how to shoot this thing So I shot it on all formats the photographic spray-and-pray technique the first I needed to pimp slap some ectochrome back into the Hasse Of the prior 16 shot roll of the e100 I got 10 keepers and three or four portfolio shots I don't know. Those night shots are pretty magical Speaking of magic there was none of it in the air that morning these e100 shots of the house look like Bison likes of which we'd seen smelled and admired more than our fair share of in the past few days The black-and-white shot was law as well. But whatever the infrared shot was probably the best take on it On our way through we decided to stop in the park for you know One last hurrah or at least one more whiff of natural sulfuric ass cheese. I Think the color infrared was definitely the shining star here. This shot is pretty damn good And this shot over here it looks like an apocalyptic cursed river of blood which I think is pretty metal It was a chill day full of lots of driving we did eventually stop at this lake for a break. Hey that rhyme I'm a poet and didn't even ever know I could rhyme that good ever We eventually realized it was piece of time and David was very enthusiastic about it I Took a couple of photos here on ectochrome. I mean, how can you not right? They just weren't really that good kind of backlit for the most part black and white here would have been the move Here's one shot. So, you know what? I mean just kind of washed out looking up very colorful Yeah, that's a 6x24 camera that David is wielding and I don't know what to tell you this dude seems to be getting crazier every time I see him We finally arrived at our Tetons accommodation for the next few days It was this like cabin on this roadside ranch out in the middle of nowhere where weird probably goes down But we were kind of into it But the light leaving us physically not abstractly we headed out to a pull-off somewhere in the mountains that looked strangely like the Dolomites Anyway me looking like the Timu version of Oppenheimer for some reason I set out to try and find a good enough subject for the shot before the light ran out This photo is nice. I mean, it's simple. It doesn't really get much simpler than you know log in field, but I dig it No, it's too dark Okay, that's the wrong way to walk Do the same one as me? Yeah, it's not bad doesn't really taste like an IPA. No, I wonder if that's why it's popular Well, we have cable TV so we could watch a cable TV, oh We can also play cards, yeah There's David's sleeping quarters hardcore Next morning. We decided to wake up at you know The gooch of dawn to photograph the molten barn a very popular photographers right of passage I guess and that morning I was definitely looking like whatever the hell that thing was at the end of alien Romulus truth Be told the next day was forecasted to be cloudy So today was the only day we could shoot it and us being very lively and peppy people first thing in the morning We said a reluctant. Hell. Yeah, I guess Anyway, we got there with time to spare and yeah, there was definitely no shortage of photographers spouting off their wisdom first thing in the morning This barn is probably one of the most imaged things in the Tetons besides the Tetons themselves So I wasn't really gonna be able to do it differently or better than anyone else But I gave it the old switcheroo anyway and nestled myself in some foliage kind of like the Bushman of San Francisco for some cool foreground action So was it fart, you know fine art not quite it kind of leaned more towards shart, you know, sh**ty art I mean, it's not terrible Here's before the Sun hit it and then you know after the Sun hit it the colors are definitely a vibe on both But I'm not sure which one is better I think both of them are gonna kind of stay out of the portfolio for now on account of it's nothing new to anyone Just ran out of film It's gonna be a banger just as good Damn boy flames fire Man maybe it's time to become a Hassle bro Speaking of baddies this shot I Like the tones and what the orange filter did this guy creating this almost aura like glow around the Tetons The lines cutting parallel through the shot is a nice touch as well This sh** is layered vertically like a juicy lasagna dripping in swag sauce After eating some eggs henny that is eggs off the heen because a little hair of the dog never killed anyone We just decided to head back to the ranch for a little siesta that day I still had some black and white in the hassie and I decided to kill the roll and you know Bury it unceremoniously in an unmarked grave that evening This photo of the old gas pumps is kind of cool They look out of place like two monoliths in the middle of nowhere or something I guess it helps that can't mirror pretty much always delivers But the 16 exposure roll of cam here 400 pushed two stops with a slice of orange I got eight keepers and I don't know about any portfolio shots. Actually, maybe this one. It's a vibe That night we blazed through a new moon as we continued our epic trek through the Twilight Saga and just like how Bella made A fierce realization about Jacob and his abs We also made a fierce realization about the night sky that evening It was one of those like super clear night skies where you could see the like faint outline of the Milky Way with your own Eyes, so me being a traitor to my film community. I grabbed my digital camera for some Milky Way long exposures on infrared It's kind of cool maybe more from like a technical perspective though The red in this image is actually infrared light of which the night sky is apparently just littered with The next morning we didn't get up too much But I woke up pissed off and ready to fight like usual and I guess shoot photos, too So me itching like a crack addict I noticed the light piping in from the window next to beer gets bed was totally killer So I set up the hassy and you know got my fix It was a slow roll out kind of morning our last full day out on the range So we head into the local town of Du Bois to sit around and ingest stimulants Du Bois Du Bois I don't know how to pronounce it At the coffee shop. We got a really nice recommendation from a local about a viewpoint over the town just down the road So we decided to go check it out. A nice view is not always a good photo I've said it a thousand times and maybe even have it tattooed on my ass. Is he telling the truth or is he lying? You'll never know but maybe just maybe a scenic view ain't so bad in a photo Red truck centers itself in frame for you It's an okay shot. It would have gone a lot harder on air chrome But it is what it is in a world where it do be like that sometimes There was an RV there. They pulled up for a first split second. I'll be quick out here on these streets With bangers acquired and that's feeling ready to squeeze the day or whatever the phrase is We headed back to the ranch to grab some stuff before we headed back west to the Tetons Anyway at the intersection of shirt and hella and wrinkles we made a stop to shoot some views of the Tetons under cloudy conditions There's film in there it stopped came here was really the only I was gonna rock here What is it I said bear like bro, we should get the fuck out of here Back in the park We had a checklist of items to see before the usual, you know Vacation beer clock the first of which was this famous log cabin church with views of the mountains I wasn't expecting much from the color of the surrounding scenery So I grabbed my infrared and my black-and-white for the location Cop no stop. That's right. Turns out it was kind of the right choice. Some of my best shots were about to happen If there's a piece of wisdom I can impart upon you Right off the bat we're cooking with gas and what do you know? It's turned into an uncontrollable grease fire. I like this shot It's layered pretty nicely. The colors are great. And this lady is kind of posed almost perfectly It was another one of those, you know, find the composition and then wait for the moment to happen kind of shots Eventually, I switched back over to black-and-white and did another pass of the area looking for new angles like at this one on the ass end of the church I Hope you know that I can't actually take a photo from this angle without without two hands, so it's all for show Afterwards we headed to the lake but were immediately met with warnings of an incoming storm of weather over the mountains Park Ranger just gave us a pretty big Entire park storm warning here. Don't wanna get struck by lightning. We're gonna Put a temporary pause on swimming and just hang out in the car for a second. Hopefully it passes pretty quick With us cowering in the car. We decided to pass the time the way the Cowboys did when they had to hunker down Anyway after the light rainstorm that must have been an inside joke by the park rangers or something because frankly I can piss more fluid Ounces than that we headed to the lake for a chill time The last time you're gonna see him for a while You tired The next morning was sad because it was all over time for us to part ways and head back to wherever the hell we came From hopefully with fresh piping hot portfolio shots, but we certainly didn't know what we got at the time All we did know is that Adam Scott was on our flight back to LA. So that was kind of cool For us not really for him. Probably. I think I got some good shit on this trip It was definitely a landscape photography oriented trip, but that's not a bad thing I've said it 10,000 times, but when you're surrounded by other enthusiastic creatives your best work oftentimes comes out It also helps that these people are just about as immature as me oftentimes. So kind of a match made in hell Did the hassy double back strategy work I don't know kind of think of it kind of like being robbed by a truck stop hooker It's gonna suck and then it's gonna suck a lot more later It was nice carrying one camera with two stocks ready to go But it was kind of a pain in the ass swapping filters and ISO and settings and so on and so forth in the future It would probably make more sense to carry a separate camera loaded with a separate film stock or look You know what? I mean, or I don't know just hire some miserable assistant to carry him around for you Whatever on to the next one. I don't know when it'll be but I can't imagine it'll be too long from now wink What does that even mean it's not a good ending