Fences in Paradise

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Devil’s Theme Park. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 66 mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

Late last week I drove my daughter to Pray, Montana, so she could attend a wedding. The perk for me was that I had a full Friday to photograph in a pretty area where I had never been. It is so pretty, in fact, that it is called Paradise Valley. The valley runs pretty much north-south with the Yellowstone River flowing down its center.

As is my common practice, when I am going to a state I haven’t spent much time in, I order the appropriate DeLorme road atlas and spend some time looking at it. A point of interest marked near the southern end of the valleyโ€”only a few miles from Yellowstone National Parkโ€”was Devil’s Slide. I looked it up online and it seemed to be worth a visit. Since it’s on the west side of the valley, I drove there early to catch the morning light. This part of the valley is pretty deep, so I had to wait for the shadow cast by the ridge to the east to recede out of the frame (it lurks just out of the bottom of the images above and to the right). Devil’s Slide is the curved red rock area on the right hand side. I decided that the rock wall on the left looked a bit like a roller-coaster, hence my title. In one final irony, the focal length ended up being 66mm…coincidence?

Devil in Paradise.
Another perspective.

There were other interesting exposed geologic features on the west side of the valley, too, including this narrow jagged spine which, in the end, I decided to present as a diagonal slash across a square frame:

Spiny Ridge. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 120 mm, 1/180 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

I also liked this formation which reminded me of some giant creature breaking the surface, perhaps a bit like a single coil of the Loch Ness Monster:

Breaching Rock. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 120 mm, 1/180 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

I do wish there was better contrast between the top of the rock wall and the slope beyond; perhaps in June, when the grass should be green, there would be.

Consistent with the long barbed-wire fence across the bottom of the image, above, there are a lot of ranches up and down Paradise Valley. Wherever there are lots of ranches there are lots of fences, even if some are not well-maintained:

Just Go Around. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 104 mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

It took me a fair amount of time online to figure out that this next style of fence is called buck-and-rail, which seems like it uses more wood but involves less digging, so if you prefer a saw to a shovel and have a lot of land to fence in, this might be the style for you. It was a windy place, so the tumbleweeds were no surprise:

Tumbling No More. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 33.5 mm, 1/250 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

The grasses themselves, when backlit, showed off wonderful golden colors. For this last image I added a 6-stop neutral density filter for a longer exposure to help contrast the motion of the grasses in the wind against the stationary fence:

Wound and Windy. Paradise Valley, Montana, September 2024.
Nikon Z8ย withย Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 Sย at 82 mm, 1/4 sec, f/9.5, ISO 64.

The windblown grass ended up making an interesting texture and the dark fencing stands out strongly against that bright, blurred background. I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being a minimalist photographerโ€”at least in terms of compositionโ€”but I do enjoy minimal color palettes like this one. I wish I could have gotten a little bit higher perspective to bring the tops of the posts down below the grasses on the “horizon”, but it was a long exposure and my tripod wouldn’t reach any higher, so this was the best I could do. That is a problem that I am noticing more and more; I think a taller tripod is in my future. In the meantime, I will file this image in my challenging-image-to-be-edited-on-a-snowy-day collection…I just might be able to cheat and move that horizon up a little bit in Affinity Photo.

I hope you enjoyed these images. Next week I will share my brief foray into Yellowstone National Park.

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