There’s a new image gallery at http://photophart.com called, simply, 10000 Square Meters. Honestly, I’m amazed at the number of images that ended up there. They represent the exploration of a tiny patch of the Bighorn National Forest in central Wyoming. The Bighorn National Forest is millions of acres and gazillions of trees. It is big mountains and rugged terrain, roaring runoff and profound silence. For this project the theme was simple: photograph anything and everything in a randomly selected piece of real estate in the forest.  That particular piece of real estate was a square 100 meters on a side. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. I figured there would be a fair number of things to make photos of. Turns out there were much more than that.  It took me two weeks to shoot the images that now appear in the new gallery. I could have stayed two more. As with all outdoor work the time of day was critical for many of the images and being in the same place day after day allowed intimate interaction with the light in certain shots. In a forest as dense and tall as this twenty minutes of sun movement can make or break an image. Most useful were the almost daily rain showers, some gentle and relaxing, some torrential. With the rain came a daily period of overcast sky that turned the sky into a giant softbox, just about perfect for flower photography. Speaking of flowers, that was perhaps the biggest surprise. I was there the last week in July and first week in August, past the peak of wildflower season, I thought.  Camped at an elevation of 9000 feet the air is quite cold, especially at night. The environment seemed a bit inhospitable for flowers. I was wrong.

The subtle complexity of a big mature forest is mesmerizing. Many times I just sat on a rock and watched as the silent opera of forest life went on around me. When I was actually making images I found more subjects and scenes than I could keep track of,  like this Bicknell Geranium.

Trees of a dozen species arranged in forms, lines and shapes with endless variations, like this stand of Aspen.

There were dozens of wildflowers like this marvelous example of the ubiquitous Bluebell.

There are many more photos in this project. Do visit the gallery “10000 Square Meters” in the Galleries section of http://www.photophart.com  Having spent several weeks processing the images from this excursion, the gallery is pretty much done at this point. Here’s a direct link if you’d prefer: https://photophart.com/gallery/10000-square-meters/

PP