What should I photograph in Yellowstone?

You honestly can't drive around yellowstone for 5 minutes without falling on some sort of geothermic feature. The main road in yellowstone is a great big figure 8, with stuff all along it, fantastic waterfalls, hot springs, paint pots, etc etc etc. You seriously can't go wrong just picking a place and going there. All the cool stuff is within easy distance of a parking lot and a bathroom, with plenty of signs and really well kept pathways. You won't have to hike more then a half mile at any area. Just get a map on the way in and you're good to go. Our parks system is the awesome. Here are some highlights: - Old Faithful (duh) and the Lodge, and the whole upper geyser basin - Lower geyser basin (really cool bacterial mats) - Paint Pots - The whole area around Mammoth (weird alien looking deposits) - DEFINITELY go to Grand Prismatic Lake, a spectrum of a bacterial mat, and the infinitely blue Excelsior Geyser right next to it - Upper and Lower falls, and Tower falls too - The drive from Upper/Lower falls to Mammoth is really amazing and kinda scary - West thumb has a lot of weird fumaroles and things

Don't miss out on a sunrise down on Mormon row in the Tetons. As for Yellowstone, yeah, mid-day is rife with idjets driving around like it's their own personal Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then slamming on their brakes every time they see a vertebrate animal. Sunrise is fantastic - perhaps head out from Norris toward West Yellowstone for fog lifting from the streams. And the view looking over Yellowstone Falls, right at the chasm, is excellent with rainbows around two in the afternoon, as I recall. You might consider, spend the first day doing the whole loop, stop wherever you feel like it. Use that quick sampler to figure otu where you wanna go for the other 2.5 days. And have a few Big Sky and Snake River (jackson) beers for me, please.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mach5/169010192/in/set-72157594189861811/ (this is from a big long trip, but keep clicking next and you'll see a bunch of yellowstone pics). The order of the pictures is: old falthful, upper geyser basin, grand prismatic, lower geyser basin, upper/lower falls, tower falls, mammoth, out the north entrance.

I would look at some other photographer's work. I think Friedlander took some Yellowstone photos, and then there's always Ansel Adams.

I was born and raised in Jackson. Tourist season in Yellowstone is definitely in full swing as trbrts mentions. I wasn't much into photography when I was growing up, so I don't have a ton of detailed advice. I do imagine that constantly having to avoid getting someone's fanny pack in your shot would be pretty frustrating though. Yellowstone is absolutely stunning, don't get me wrong. But there are plenty of other areas around just as stunning that aren't overrun. There's enough goodness in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Teton_National_Park to warrant a day (e.g. those panoramas at the bottom of the page) and the mob will be a bit thinner.

Great information thus far people, keep it coming! Nelsormensch: actually, I had completely forgotten to mention that I also wanted to go to the Grand Tetons National Park. So, similarly, any information people have about how to best see it would be hugely helpful.

The Grand Tetons have a number of locations; a search for "Grand Tetons photography" will get you tons of suggestions. Two reasonably accessible areas that are "classic" views are http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-13,GGGL:en&q=schwabacher%20landing&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi and http://images.google.com/images?q=Mt.%20Moran%20oxbow%20bend&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-13,GGGL:en&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi on the Snake river, but there are many others. There will be opportunities for wildlife, too, just about anywhere if you are lucky. I met http://www.brianbastinelli.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=4800&Akey=KLB3KPWC at a photo workshop in the Tetons and he also traveled through Yellowstone on the same trip; there are a lot of pictures from those areas on his site.

A photographer friend of mine visited Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons just last summer. You might want to check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/labimposter/sets/72157600585374615/ to get ideas of where to go. The Moulton Barn along Mormon Row in Grand Teton National Park is pretty much a required shot for photographers!

Get to some of the thermal features early in the morning. That's when the most water vapor will be in the air. It's challening to photograph, of course, but the early morning light and the "fog" can create some dramatic effects. Also, the bison and other animals are more likely to be around in the morning than later in the day when more people start milling about. There are some areas where the hot water from thermal areas runs into cold streams and rivers, and that can be quite dramatic as the layer of mist hangs over the river. (Ask a ranger to point some of these areas out.) Also, the east entrance area between Cody and the park is the Shoshone National Forest, and is full of incredible rock formations. There's no shortage of great photographic opportunities anywhere you go in the park. But like all photography, being there during the magic hour when the light is most dramatic makes the difference between a photograph and a snapshot.