Do you shoot mostly in national parks?

[m._huber]

My question stems from answers to the "shooting alone" discussion. Many of the answers mentioned trails, look-outs, meeting other photographers, etc. and seem to generally prefer to shoot in National Parks. Am I reading the anwers wrong, or am I the only only one who avoids National Parks enen though I know I'm missing some spectacular scenes? I avoid them for same reason I prefer to shoot alone. I live 90 miles from Yosemite and never go there unless I have company that wants to go. I shoot all over that general area, but hardly ever in the Park. When we went to Yellowstone, we found the better pictures and more enjoyable scenery outside the park. Fortunately, I am old enough to have visited a lot of these places when they were not crowded. Now, I like exploring new places where nobody else goes to shoot the critters, the mountains, the flowers, etc.

[bobatkins]

National Parks give you the most "bang for the buck". If you only

have a limited amount of time in an area, the NP is usually the

place to visit. Not only are they selected to be areas of outstanding

natural beauty, but quite often the animals in the park are somewhat

more aproachable since they aren't hunted and get to see more people.

 

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I think these are the reasons many of us shoot in the National Parks,

and we put up with the crowds. Personally I just avoid them in the summer. "Out of season" most of them aren't too crowded. In fact if

you leave the roads and hike the trails, you often don't see many

people at all.

[dick_ginkowski]

To amplify Bob's response...

 

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The prime time for nature photographers -- early morning and late evening light and cloudy, bright days -- generally isn't for the general public so the crowd effect is usually attenuated.

[jim_bridges]

I do my outdoor photography in a state park about thirty miles southwest of Houston, Texas. It has four different ecosystems on forty-nine hundred acres. There is a grassland prairie, river bottom hardwood forest (Brazos River), swamps, and wetland marshes. There are two small lakes with trails that circle around them, and they get the most visitor traffic. The trails in the forest, and prairie areas are the least visited, and that�s where I do most of my shooting. I venture around the lake trails in the winter, and in the hot summer months when there aren�t as many park guests. In the spring, and fall these trails will have a steady steam of people walking a round them. I do most of my shooting from dawn to 10:00 am, so I�m usually finished by the time the regular crowd hit�s the trails.

 

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We don�t have any wildlife that is dangerous in the area, well I guess the feral hogs could be, if you get one cornered, but they usually see, or hear you before you see them, and all you see is the backsides of them running away. There are four poisonous snakes in the area, but in fourteen years I�ve seen six, or so. Snakes are the one critter that I watch out for!

 

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There is one thing I�ve been doing for the past year, at my wife�s request, and I think it�s a great idea, I now carry a cell-phone with me. Just in case of an emergency. I don�t even turn it on, but it�s there if I do need it. You never know, it may save my, or someone else�s life sometime. I have the park headquarters number programmed into it, so all I have to do is turn it on, and press a button. I just hope I never have to use it.

[rob___]

When I look and politics involving land preservation in the U.S., I am releived that I am Canadian. Our government deals with some of the same economic and social pressures as yours, but it is not afraid to set aside vast tracts of land for the sake of genetic and ecosystem diversity. Some have NO human access of any kind. Strathcona Provincial Park contains huge zones where internal combustion engines are prohibited! One respondent mentioned that his local park is 4900 acres and it keeps him happy. B.C. has several parks approaching 1,000,000 acres.<p>

Given the remotenes of these parks, and the difficult access, crowds are almost never a problem (there are exceptions, though). Of course, while industrial development is widespread, many publicly owned lands are unroaded and unexploited anyway. I could walk off the highway, through a Park, through private land, through a tree-farm license and back to the highway and never know the difference. I may seem smug, but boy am I grateful. I can photograph alone almost anywhere.

Even the capital, Victoria, has blocks of old-growth forest and salmon-spawning rivers.

[bob_royse]

I agree with you that it's more interesing to find your own places to do photography. Living in Ohio, all National Parks are of considerable distance from me, but when I feel like it, I can drive an hour or two in any direction to some photographically untapped destination of great interest. I feel that I've barely scratched the surface with the possibilities and that my motivation and energy are all that's holding back my photography. Documenting the natural history in my area is also of more interest to the viewers of my photographs, being more than vacation shots. I've never even been to a USA national park and, except for a few in far away Utah, have never even thought about it. Whenever I travel (not work related) it is primarily to see and photograph birds. The USA national parks aren't primary destinations for that.

[m._huber]

Robert, you stated my feelings much better than I did.. especially about documenting natural history in the local area. I also have some very unique pictures of the back country taken when traveling horseback. Hovever, I am not a professional and I don't have to sell my pictures or have a huge supply of quality slides.

[steve_fletcher]

Rob S, you're right about Canada, but as a fellow Canadian whose lived a long time in the US, I have to point out that the low population density up north makes the comparison between the two countries not terribly meaningful, IMHO. And, it seems to me that B.C. is getting pretty well dismantled by the clear cutting companies out for profit. Then there's Sudbury, Ontario (the single giant smokestack once thought responsible for something like 20% of all N. American acid rain?), and the rest of southern Ontario, pretty much wilderness free these days. Pt. Pelee, nice as it is, is a pathetic little sprig of semi-wild land isolated by the dullest farm land imaginable, a characteristic that depressed me whenever I visited. Where the population density is similar, I don't see much difference between the actions of the two governments.

 

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And Robert R., I do agree that staying off the beaten path is a great idea, but if you'e never been to any US national parks, I think you are missing something. I avoid Yosemite in Summer, but have now visited in the offpeak months of Dec, Feb, and my favorite, October. Wonderful, and empty. I find the big parks great primarily for exploration and hiking, however, not so much photography. Landscape work is a given in the Sierras, but for wildlife I agree the big parks are not the place to go. Animals seem to instinctively avoid people who are specifically searching for them :-). We probably all know the joke that long lenses are the best bear repellent you could ever imagine when in the big parks. :-)

[bob_royse]

I didn't mean to imply that one should avoid national parks. Seeing that I haven't visited any in the US, I also can't claim that you should avoid them! I'd really like to visit those in Utah some day.

 

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Travelling is expensive no matter how you look at it. With the little travelling that I get to do, I try to hit good spots for birds. Most people really don't have to go very far for good "nature" photography. Exploring areas near where you live regularly over a period of several years can be equally fruitful for photography as travelling if you're disciplined enough. Going somewhere for the sole purpose of doing photography is easier than doing the same based at home where there are lots of distractions. Learning when and where the light or species will be at its finest in your area can usually produce as compelling images as those taken on a trip to a place that you've never been.

[paul_wilson2]

I just returned from 11 days in Utah and Wyoming yesterday. After having been there(I visited Yellowstone, Bryce and Arches), I can understand why Ansel Adams spent his time out there instead of my native Massachusetts.

[stanley_mcmanus]

Paul, I won't disagree with your opinion of Utah and Wyoming, but as a Westerner who has made a few trips to the East Coast I can say that you have some pretty nice places there. New England and the coast are fabulous. I love some of the back country in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. The only thing you folks lack east of the Mississippi are mountains. You only have big hills compared to the Rockies or Sierra Nevada.

 

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Bye the way Mammoth Caves NP is certainly one of the most unique and interesting national parks I have ever visited. It's not that far from where you live.