The Vir­gin River — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

National Park Pictures

I need to spend more of my trav­el­ing time tak­ing national park pic­tures, such as this one from Zion National Park. To be hon­est, I’ve only taken one trip specif­i­cally to Zion for some pho­tographs. The rest of my national park pic­tures have been side-​trips. Maybe part of the plan, but not nec­es­sar­ily the des­ti­na­tion itself. Per­haps the only other place that comes close for my travel was Wash­ing­ton, D.C., since there are so many sites sup­ported by National Parks Services.

One of the rea­sons I want to visit more national parks is for some­thing that I’ve heard other pho­tog­ra­phers scoff — tro­phy hunt­ing. I don’t mean tro­phies from wild ani­mals, but rather, to get a pho­to­graph of a famous land­mark. I’m not too proud to admit that I’d like to get my own shots of pho­tos that I’ve seen from oth­ers. I don’t find the slight­est shame in tak­ing pop­u­lar national park pic­tures, either. That’s why I made a day trip from Las Vegas back to Zion National Park to get the shot above. Count­less pho­tog­ra­phers have taken a photo of these scene and count­less more will do the same. In fact, I’ll go back again at a dif­fer­ent time of the year when to get a shot when the trees aren’t so barren.

Why do some pho­tog­ra­phers look down on oth­ers for tak­ing tro­phy pho­tos? Some think it shows a lack of orig­i­nal­ity. It’s been done before, we have enough pho­tographs of The Watch­man, Half Dome or Mesa Arch already. Go do some­thing dif­fer­ent and new.

I’m all for orig­i­nal­ity, if it’s good. That’s because I’ve also looked at a lot of orig­i­nal pho­tos that really sucked. I don’t com­pletely dis­miss this notion, but I def­i­nitely dis­miss it as a crit­i­cism intended to dis­suade some­one from tak­ing their own national park pic­tures. First, the parks are always chang­ing. From dif­fer­ent sea­sons to dif­fer­ent weather and even dif­fer­ent times of day, the scene changes. Your orig­i­nal effort may be to put a dif­fer­ent spin on a pop­u­lar sub­ject. For exam­ple, some peo­ple are using long expo­sures to com­bine star trails and light paint­ing of nat­ural ele­ments to cre­ate their photo. It’s not some­thing I’m likely to repli­cate, but it was a dif­fer­ent attack on a com­mon scene. Of course, that’s when the purists dis­missed their pho­tos as “gimmicks.”

The Pho­tog­ra­phy Critic

The only time I hear these kinds of crit­i­cism is when it comes from another pho­tog­ra­pher. The aver­age per­son who enjoys national park pic­tures doesn’t care if you weren’t the first per­son to take the shot. They either like the photo or they don’t. I think pho­tog­ra­phers spend too much time dis­sect­ing pho­tographs based upon their own bias.

Oh, another sun­set? That’s so pedan­tic. You went to Mesa Arch? You and 30 other pho­tog­ra­phers every day. We pho­tog­ra­phers have a tire­some list of things that other pho­tog­ra­phers should and should not do. I’ve noticed that some folks add things to the list only after they’ve done it themselves.

I think that part of the joy of pho­tog­ra­phy is exper­i­ment­ing and grow­ing. To do that, we some­times wish to shoot the same sub­jects that another pho­tog­ra­pher shot. It gives us a basis of com­par­i­son. It’s also a bit of a chal­lenge, too. It’s a mat­ter of test­ing your­self to see if you’ve grown enough to do some­thing that you admire in another photographer’s work. If noth­ing else, it’s a fine excuse to visit a beau­ti­ful place and take home a lit­tle piece of it for your­self. I see count­less peo­ple doing that at every travel des­ti­na­tion with Insta­gram or another mobile phone cam­era appli­ca­tion. Why shouldn’t it be just as accept­able for DSLR shooters?

The crit­i­cism seems to come from pho­tog­ra­phers who have become jaded. Many of us have seen the same kind of pho­tographs repeat­edly, and I can under­stand the desire for some­thing fresh. Per­son­ally, I don’t want to see another black & white long expo­sure of a pier in water. Every­one who bought a 10-​stop ND fil­ter has made this shot. They want to see how they can smooth the water with a long expo­sure. Most of the pho­tos I see like these long expo­sures seem to demon­strate more tech­nique than emo­tion, so I’m not really feel­ing any­thing from such images. How­ever, I wouldn’t dream of telling some­one that they shouldn’t try it. I have a 10-​stop ND fil­ter, too. Maybe I’ll use it on a shot when I can think of way to include some emo­tional impact. Until then, I fig­ure live and let live. If that’s what you like, go shoot it. Learn from the experience.

NPS Dig­i­tal Image Archives

The nice thing about national park pic­tures is that most of us have access to them. In fact, you can research your favorite national park pic­tures on the NPS Dig­i­tal Image Archives. There are plenty of free pub­lic domain pho­tos to give you an idea of the major fea­tures of each national park.

I’m proud to announce that I have many pedan­tic pho­tos in my library. That means I got off my ass and went out to shoot instead of telling myself all the rea­sons I should stay home because it’s all been done before. In the mean time, I’ll dig through these archives to see what other over­shot sites I want to visit. When it’s all said and done, I’m really doing this for my own enjoyment.