Thursday, March 31, 2022

The art of misery

Lodgepole Pine Snags and Shadows, Winter, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Would you like this picture more if you knew I was in pain when I made it? That my fingers ached after I removed one of my gloves in the sub-freezing temperatures in order to work faster in the fleeting light? That a half hour earlier I injured my back while trying to speed through waist-deep snow with my heavy camera bag?

It is a somewhat serious question. Anybody can take photos and most people always have a camera with them. The number of pictures taken in any given day is approaching the population of Earth. So, what separates the dedicated artists from anyone with a smartphone? The amount of suffering is becoming that measuring stick.

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Happy birthday, Yellowstone

Mist in Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

The idea of the national park is 150 years old today. On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act setting aside Yellowstone as a public park. It wasn’t the plan, but it ended up being the first of many. Over the century and a half that followed, the United States added another 62 parks and hundreds more federally-protected scenic areas, monuments, seashores and rivers.

The concept of the national park has been called “America’s best idea,” but as Yellowstone has shown, the idea itself has evolved dramatically over the years.