Schwabacher’s Landing in Grand Teton National Park

Our second morning at Grand Teton was going to be spent taking shots at Oxbow Bend near Jackson Lake. Oxbow Bend is a beautiful spot where the Snake River takes a meandering bend with Mount Moran in the distance. We scouted out some spots, marked them on the GPS, calculated where sunrise would be, etc. – all the typical prep for a landscape shot – and happily went on our way to scout additional locations. We stopped by Schwabacher’s Landing and found that, for our final morning, its potential trumped Oxbow Bend. Schwabacher’s Landing is a spot in the Snake River, almost exactly east of Grand Teton, where the terrain flattens out and allows easy access to the river. There is a dirt road coming off the main highway and down to various trailheads. As we hiked around we found several beaver ponds that, combined with Schwabacher’s lower elevation (thus blocking the wind), would very likely provide some spectacular reflections of the mountains. Well, we got up at about 5:00 AM and headed out to the spot, though we were bummed by the lack of clouds in the sky. There were several other photographers down there (none of whom were using polarizers – tsk, tsk) [...]