The Story Behind The Image; Mormon Barns

The south Mormon barn. (click to enlarge)
Nikon D800E; 24-70mm f/2.8 lens @ 70mm; 1/500th sec. @ f/9; ISO 800

If you've been a landscape photographer for any time, especially in the United States, you probably recognize the two images in this post.  They are the two Mormon barns located in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just east of Grand Teton National Park.  About a "gazillion" photographs have been made of these two old structures.

The north Mormon barn with the Tetons in the background. (click to enlarge)
Nikon D800E; 24-70mm f/2.8 lens @ 62mm; 1/800th sec. @ f/9; ISO 250

If you've never seen them and are in the Jackson Hole/Grand Teton National Park area, you really should drive over to photograph them. When you arrive and even though the two barns have been photographed by everyone this side of Jupiter, you have to make your own images just to satisfy yourself.  That's what I did here.  I satisfied my desire to make the classic images, then I went about making some other images, including detail and non-post card type images.  

I am a proponent of the philosophy that when you arrive at a "classic" landscape scene which has been photographed by just about everyone, one should make the classic recognizable images from the popular vantage points first, just to get those out of your system.  Then, after you've made those, concentrate on what other unique images you can make to call you own.

That being said, when arriving at these barns, the weather conditions were worse than I had hoped so I had to modify my original vision of what photographs I wanted to create.  How would I need to envision what different I wanted to create?

When my wife and I arrived at the end of September, 2012, as is not usual for that time of year, there were wildfires in the area.  For the three days we spent visiting Grand Teton National Park, Jackson and Jackson Hole, not only did a thick blue haze hang anywhere from about 500 ft. to a couple of thousand feet above the ground but storm clouds moved in and out.  The air was also thick with the smell of smoke.  Not pleasant.  Not what I envisioned.  But, we can't control the weather.

Obviously, this was not a welcomed site as we had driven across the U.S. from our home in Virginia to Wyoming, a 2200 mile (3,500 km) road trip.  But I still was determined to photograph the area.  So, how to make lemonade out of lemons, as the old saying goes?

My original vision was to arrive before dawn and wait for the sun to rise over the mountains to the east.  When looking at these two images, the run rises generally behind the camera position.  These images are facing west.  I wanted that very pink/orange/yellow "golden hour" sun to bath the Tetons in the background while the barns sat in the blue of the early morning dawn.  But...that mostly didn't happen and only a very minimal amount of good light shown through the heavy clouds and smoke layer so I had to go to plan B.

Plan B was to make the best images I could under the weather conditions I now found.  In the past, I posted color versions of these images but at the time I envisioned black and white.  I have come to like the black and white versions better.  I really had to manipulate the color version to make it look kind of how I originally envisioned the barns and I really don't like doing that.  The color that morning was marginal at best and I think the black and white allows the character of the area to not be distracted by the weak, sick-looking color.

I guess the lesson here is to not to expect things to go as you may want them to be—even after driving thousands of miles.  You just have to have an alternate plan in the back of your head to create a different vision for your images in any given area.

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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