Last year Amanda and I went to Montana for a week in early May and visited Yellowstone for a couple days before the official start of the summer season. It was chilly and some roads were closed due to snow, but we avoided the crowds and got to explore the park in relative solitude.

I haven’t shot photos much since graduating from Hillsdale, so I decided to take my camera along. Like any other skill, you need to practice photography regularly so you don’t lose your sense of composition, light, and technical settings like aperture and shutter speed. It was frustrating to discover that I’ve lost some of the edge that I worked so hard to hone in high school and college, but it was nice to put my gear through its paces again.

Here is the best of what I shot over two days in Yellowstone. I took a few landscapes, but I mostly focused on the colors and textures I encountered.

We also drove down into Grand Teton National Park for a little while: