Image of the Week: Chapel of the Transfiguration, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Sometimes I feel like a professional tourist.

Everywhere I go, I'm laden with cameras. I can't go out the front door without hauling a camera bag. Every time I board a plane, I've got at least two carry-ons stuffed to the gills with an assortment of camera bodies, lenses, and film. I'm in and out of airports, small planes, big planes, buses, vans, and subway trains dragging a metric ton of gear on wheels and shoulders, all so I can show up at a remote location and shoot something that has been shot a zillion times before.

The real trick: use your head -- don't photograph like a tourist.

Take this week's image for example: The Chapel of the Transfiguration in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. I was in the Tetons this fall-color season with a hiking partner scouting out locations for possible future trips and stock shoots. We stopped at the Chapel one afternoon on our way to Jackson Hole for supplies.

Do a search for "Chapel of the Transfiguration" at your favorite internet search engine and you'll receive pages and pages of photographs of the Chapel. It's a well-covered subject. Most of the images feature the entire chapel with the majestic Tetons in the background. A smaller bunch of photos are taken from the inside where an immense plate glass window frames the Tetons just above the Chapel's altar and crucifix.

My take on the Chapel is a little more graphic than most. The centered composition emphasizes the repetive elements of the crosses on the inside altar and the roof. By cropping tight on the Chapel, I was able to isolate two complementary swatches of bold color: the blue sky above, and the bright yellow aspens below, framed within the plate glass window above the altar. The "picture within a picture" creates a feeling of depth within the photograph, drawing the viewer into the front door.

When you're playing the tourist, you might not invent anything completely new, but with the right timing and thinking, you can bring your own perspective to it.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Chapel of the Transfiguration, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor AF lens. The exposure was 1/100 sec at ƒ/8.

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