Persistence is key to results.  The weather doesn’t always cooperate.

On a trip several years ago, I went to a place called Schwabacher Landing, a landmark in the Grand Teton National Park, for a sunrise photoshot.

This would be a fantastic photo, but it is missing one thing — The Mountain!

Everything else about this image is great.  I had my tripod locked, the camera in manual, it was all ready to go.  For an hour.  And no mountain.

This brings up an important aspect of landscape photography – patience.

 

Two days later, I had another chance to go.  It was a late-day shoot, so not sunrise nor sunset (we had something else planned for sunset).  There was about 30 minutes to try again.

I liked everything about the first image.  And so I ran ahead to get everything as close as possible to the earlier image.

The final image is just a little wider than the first attempt.  But it has the mountain, and reflection, and the framing is quite nice.  While I may not have found my exact tripod holes, I got what I came for and I am very happy with this image.

This is an image with a lot of details.  If you’d like one for yourself, I recommend 12×18 or even 16×24!  It looks great big and I even have a copy on my office wall.

-B