On a very early and cool September morning, my good friend and fellow photographer Tom Franks and I were driving south from Yellowstone toward Oxbow Bend. We were already familiar with this location, and knew well the photographic opportunities if the sky was cooperating.

A blue sky is great to contrast against yellow aspens, if creating color photography. But, in black and white photography a grey sky is rarely acceptable. The weather report gave us optimism that clouds which are a necessity for the image would be present in the scene.

We arrived around 7:30 a.m. and realized we were in luck. It would be a little while before the sun was high enough to expose some film, but, the clouds were already forming in the western sky. We had photographed here in the past and preferred compositions from the waters edge that included more of the reflections of Mt. Moran. On this occasion a higher elevation was selected to include the pine and aspen trees in the foreground.

I secured a spot high enough to avoid the trees in the middle-ground from intersecting the trees in the foreground. The final composition was selected by placing Mt. Moran on the right upper third.

The beautiful lenticular clouds that we had hoped for assisted in adding depth to the image.

The exposure was made on T-Max -100 5 x 7 film. I used a yellow filter and placed the pines in the

foreground on Zone III.

The clouds fell on Ev 15.3 so a plus 1 development was required.