Daily Jim pics 3 and 4

Grand Tetons in Wyoming seen across lake
Jim sent me several variations of these mountains, and I was having a hard time deciding which of them to feature, not really wanting to do a series of days of the same subject, but I liked the difference between these two images so I’m doing a double feature. These are the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, one of the more distinctive mountain ranges in the US. Take a moment to absorb the atmosphere here before moving on. I’ll wait.

Have you established the image in your mind? Good. Now let’s see the next one.

Grand Tetons in Wyoming in distance across prairie
So, does this seem to have an entirely different mood to it? It does to me, and even though I know they were taken on the same day less than a half-hour apart, they appear very strongly to be different seasons. Can you figure out why? Again, I’ll wait.

In the first pic (which was actually the latter one chronologically,) there’s more of a blue color cast and the contrast is lower. This is possibly due to cloud cover in the immediate vicinity, muting the colors of the foreground trees and lake, or possibly due to the Auto White Balance setting of Jim’s camera, having to adjust color palette based on what appears within the frame. Or both. The thing is, it’s the kind of conditions we expect from winter, and there being only conifers in the image doesn’t serve to counter this idea at all – the image just looks cold. It would be easy to think that the snow on the mountain contributes, and it might, but the same snow is visible in the second pic too. That one, however, has plenty of green, and higher contrast bright light, and even more blue sky. There’s even a hint of wildflowers, though they’re subtle enough to escape first impressions I believe (at least at this resolution.) But they don’t seem at all out of place, either. It illustrates what a difference some subtle factors can make.

By the way, Jim didn’t give me any extra info on these either – my knowledge of them comes from the EXIF info embedded in the files, a useful way of determining camera settings. One of the things not listed is the exact location, and I’m curious to know how far displaced these two images are, because I can see some subtle angular differences in the mountain faces and know there’s a notable separation – a few kilometers is my estimate, but these were shot at a slightly short/wide focal length and so appear further off than they actually were. If I were a serious badass with Google Maps I could probably figure it out, but we’ll see if Jim pops up to tell us.

And there will be at least one more Teton photo coming, mostly because I like it a lot, but also because I know what “Teton” means and have to giggle while I post them.

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