I was recently lucky enough to spend a week in Yellowstone doing nothing but photography. This is a short collection of my thoughts, and not any sort of definitive guide. My original plan was to spend several days in the park before heading out the northeast entrance for the Bearthooth Scenic Highway. Unfortunately the Beartooth range was covered in smoke, and I wound up spending more time than I'd bargained for in yellowstone. I wish I'd known this from the beginning, as I could have planned my trip more logically.

Yellowstone is a big park, and its features are spread out and often far from camping. This can mean a lot of driving, and when coupled with long summer days leads to precious little sleep for the photographer intent on catching both sunrise and sunset. I found myself unable to keep up with both golden hours and stay sane.

Compounding this problem is the slow speed at which many people drive and the frequent wildlife-caused traffic jams, or "elk jams" as a ranger called them. Yellowstone is probably the only place in the continental US where stopping a vehicle in the middle of the road and exiting it to take a photograph doesn't get you trampled by an angry mob. Until people learn that hazard lights do not excuse you from pulling onto the shoulder, you should count on drives taking twice as long as you'd normally expect based on mileage.

Campgrounds are run by either the park service or the concessionaire. Concessionaire campgrounds are reservable and unlikely to have walk-in space at peak times, while the park service campgrounds are all first-come, first-served. There's lots of turnover at the NPS campgrounds, and you should have no trouble getting space if you show up early in the day. Show up late at night and you might find yourself driving all the way through the park to a Forest Service campsite on the other side. One campground host told me Mon-Thurs was their busy time, with less traffic on weekends.

Unfortunately the concessionaire has a near-monopoly on camping and lodging in the southern half of the park. If you can plan your trip in advance, it's probably worth reserving a spot with them for the days you plan on being down by old faithful or lake yellowstone.

Park roads are organized as a big figure-eight, with spurs leading out to the five entrances. The biggest concentration of accessible geysers, mud pots, paint pots, fumaroles, hot springs, and other geothermal activity is located on the western part of this figure-eight. The eastern end parallels the Yellowstone river and contains several waterfalls. The Lamar Valley, between Tower-Roosevelt and the Northeast entrance, had a huge herd of buffalo, but wildlife can be found everywhere: ask a ranger where the herds currently are, or drive around until you see a crowd.

I found the Norris campground to be a good balance between access to geothermal features, yellowstone falls, and wildlife, but you can also do well moving from camp to camp each morning. Many locations feature 1-3 mile hikes on bike accessible-paths; brining a bike that can handle maintained dirt roads and that you don't mind leaving locked up will allow you to get around much more in a given day.

Mammoth Hot Springs has a few pools atop a giant formation of mineral deposits. I found most of the good shooting to be at the top, off Upper Terrace Drive, towards the right. However, the location of pools apparently changes over time. Best light is at sunrise, as a hill to the west obstructs the sunset.

I found the Norris Geyser Basin, Artists Paintpots and Fountain Paint Pot less photographically worthy than their compatriots. The Porcelain Basin at Norris does have some good opportunities for both sunrise and sunset shots.

If you want multicolored hot spring shots, Grand Prismatic Spring in the middle geyser basin is definitely worth the trip. It's large, and it can be difficult to get a good vantage point from the boardwalks at ground level, but fortunately there are two good ways to get vertical. Just south of the spring, a road breaks off to the right for a trailhead. Follow the dirt road over the river until you reach Grand Prismatic Spring, and then climb the hill to your left. The hillside still has a lot of burned trees, and with my limited exploration time I couldn't find a good wide-angle shot through them - one of the smaller hills just to the north might give you that sort of shot, but I wouldn't be optimistic. When you gain the top of the hill, though, you get some good telephoto opportunities to shoot the spring. Best light in the late afternoon.

If you walk to the bathrooms at the end of the parking lot and cross the road, you'll find a use trail that leads to a rocky ledge with good visibility towards the spring. The view is lower-angle and therefore not quite as good for tele shots, but you can get some great wide-angle shots of the spring, the Firehole river, and the setting sun.

Upper Geyser Basin has a huge concentration of geysers and other geothermal features. The park service predicts eruption times for several geysers with varying degrees of accuracy, allowing you to get in position ahead of time. Unfortunately there's no cheap camping here, only hotel rooms and cabins. In late July, I managed to get a rainbow on riverside geyser around 7:15.

I did a lot of searching along both canyon rims but had trouble coming up with a vantage point I was happy with. The park service bans off-trail scrambling in the canyon, which limits your options. A lot of overlooks had good tourist views but an unacceptable amount of trees blocking the foreground for pictures. In the end, the two vantage points I liked best were both of the lower falls and off the North Rim.

Lookout point has a good view looking towards the falls. Take the upper trail; the lower trail looks promising but trees block your foreground. Capturing the falls and a sunset would be difficult due to hills behind the falls, so best light is probably around sunrise. Additionally, a rainbow supposedly regularly develops between 9:30 and 10:00 AM.

There is a trail right to the brink of the lower falls, and you can get a decent wide-angle shot of both the falls and the canyon from here. I put my tripod over the corner in the railing, with one leg hanging out over the falls, and wedged it in good. Best light would be mid afternoon before the canyon gets shadowed or near sunset once the canyon is all in shadow. I went for sunset as this allowed me to blur the water and, as an added bonus, the huge crowds thinned and I almost had the place to myself - makes shooting much easier on the cramped platform.

Artist Point on the South Rim looks promising, but is closed in 07 for reconstruction, so I couldn't check it out.

Issa Lake, between Old Faithful and West Yellowstone, has a nice lilly collection. I tried shooting them while killing time in a light drizzle, but none of my shots turned out very well.

I spent a lot of time scouting good sunrise/sunset shots, but unfortunately the weather at the end of the week wasn't cooperating. A lot of the standard tourist spots aren't very conducive to sunrise/sunset photos: uneven horizons, ridgelines in front of the horizon, no interesting foreground, etc. The spots I was scouting were for summer, where the sun rises ENE and sets WNW, so different locations may apply for other seasons. Don't forget that everything will be steaming a lot more at sunrise than midday.

For sunrise, I found a good vantage point off fountain flat drive. From the parking lot, follow the dirt road across the river and cut left for several hundred yards. You can position yourself to get a shot across the river with steam columns in the background and - if you want - geothermal features in the foreground. Another good vantage point is looking across Lake Yellowstone from the West Thumb geyser basin.

For sunset, there are two spots at Upper Geyser Basin where the path crosses the Firehole River looking WNW along the length of the river, with steam columns in the foreground and acceptable though not idea horizon in the background. You can also get some good vantage points looking across or along the Madison River soon after it leaves the canyon on the way to West Yellowstone. Additionally, see Grand Prismatic Spring above.