The older you get, fewer places blow your mind when you see them. What used to amaze you when you first saw the world might not make an impact anymore.
Glacier is not one of those places.
Though most people may spend weeks planning a trip to this awesome place, I found myself there almost inadvertently. I was contracted to shoot a wedding in nearby Whitefish, MT, with a couple other people from the same studio. Two days before our flight touched down in Montana, my second shooter Corey suggested we take the morning of the wedding to check out Glacier.
It was an obvious choice.
Corey wanted to catch the sunrise at Lake McDonald, so we woke up extra early to drive in the dark to the Park entrance.
When we got to the lake, there were some pretty serious clouds covering the eastern horizon; no fiery sunrise for us this morning.
Even so, the smoke in the air from the western wildfires gave everything a yellow hue, making for some very unique pictures.
Once we decided the ‘Sunrise’ was done, we had a little bit of time to make our way up Going to the Sun Road.
I had rented a 70-200 f/4 for the wedding, and it really came in handy here. The longest lens I had owned up to that point was probably 140mm, so the extra zoom really allowed me to try some new things.
We drove up the road a few more miles and stopped at a bend in the river, where there was a nice surprise:
I’ll zoom in a bit:
I actually saw two black bears just down the road from me! Successful trip!
At this point, we knew we had to head back to get ready for the wedding. We stopped one last time at the point we had shot the sunrise.
Thanks for reading, let me know if you enjoyed the pictures!