Tetons as you arrive from the NE via Togwottee Pass, July 2022
At the JH Rodeo, Jackson, WY, August 2022
A favorite Aspen Grove, rising from the junction with the Philips Canyon trail.
On a random evening walk in the neighborhood, Wilson, WY.
Last night of the summer performance of the shootout, Town Square, Jackson.
In early September, while a heatwave across the West was prolonging summer and, for the first time in a while rendering the valley skies smoky, we were invited to the Snake River Ranch to photograph the cattle getting ready for shipment to, well, stockyards in the midwest and California.
Made it… 1400 head across the road.
The cows came home.
Mountain Town
Every mountain town in the American West has its rhythms punctuated by weather and scheduled events. These are small towns revolving around agriculture, mountain sports, tourism, and spectacles like the 4th of July parade and the summer rodeos. Jackson Hole is special, to be sure, but its not so different other amenities-focused mountain communities across the region.
The winters here are harsh and acceptable only because they bring with them a rarified level of outdoor activities: skiing and snowboarding in particular. The spring is muddy and mostly interminable, and to be honest, I’ve never spent one out here. The summer season begins with the hills green from snowmelt, flowers alongside every hiking trail, the rivers high, the air clear. As time goes on, the earth dries and smoke — from near or far, and more often these days, from 500 miles or so away — changes the tenor of the sky and the light. The county fairs and rodeos bring out both tourists and locals — and over time, while the tourists haven’t really changed, the local community is, on the one hand, increasingly Latino, and on the other, increasingly rich.
Summers are always the same, and always different. Autumn in mountain towns out West have most of the colors of New England’s prime season, but better weather and hiking, and there’s the added benefit of the tourists having left for home.
Over 20 years of living in the West part time, and since 2020, most of the time, we’ve learned about the changing light and air — and how, if you are a practitioner of landscape photography, you must take advantage of every early summer day that delivers bright, puffy clouds, because by August, or even mid-July, smoke may settle in, the sky becoming cloudless, and the mountains visible only through a haze. By fall, of course, the air has cleared and the most beautiful valley in the West is paradisiacal.
The summers of 2022 and 2023, however, weren’t smoky. The haze held off for most of both summers, and the rain came often enough to keep fields green.
As this is written, in late September 2023, the last cow has come home — literally. Summer is over, and it was a wonderful one for photography. Elsewhere on this site, you’ll see, I hope, decent landscape shots in color and Black and White. But in this gallery I wanted to do something a little different.
Yes, the landscape is sublime, any day of the year, and I’ve punctuated this gallery’s lineup with landscape photos as well as ones featuring people and animals, in order to give the viewer a realistic sense of how one’s consciousness is shaped by the environment. I’ve also tried to provide a sense of what it’s like to actually live here — to have moose show up on your doorstep, to see the cattle drive in the fall, to have the small-town pulse quickened by the fair, the rodeo, and the 4th of July. Follow along the rhythms of this gorgeous mountain town in a Western valley, and I hope you enjoy the journey.