My husband and I took this trip to Yellowstone for a couple of days during our cross-country move back to Minneapolis from San Diego a few years ago. It was October, but the first night we decided to camp in this little tent I had won in a raffle at my high school’s all-night senior party. (We also took this tent to Iceland and should’ve learned our lesson. It is a summer tent.)

The temps plummeted and I barely slept that night—and not just because I was sure a bear was roaming our campsite looking for a pre-hibernation snack (ME). It was just too cold, and at some point I abandoned the tent and made for the car to blast the heat and try to sleep a little longer.

As I started to head to the car, I realized that morning was too beautiful to sleep through. I rarely use the word breathtaking, but that’s what it was.

In the quiet hours before any other humans were awake yet (except my husband because I woke him up), elk appeared out of the mist, bison grazed in the fields and the trees blazed with color. I grabbed my camera and for the first time I felt truly connected to photography in an artistic sense.

I got into the creative flow and I didn’t get out of it for days.

It didn’t hurt that the universe blessed me with moody skies, eerie fog and majestic beasts at every turn, but there was also something very special going on between me and my camera in Yellowstone.

Standing on top of this supervolcano masquerading as a national park, I started to feel confident about my composition choices and wasn’t intimidated by all the different kinds of light. My husband patiently stopped the car on a dime every time I’d confidently announce that I needed to take another picture of a tree or get those bison from another angle.

These days in Yellowstone turned into a personal photography workshop where I just let myself make pictures without the pressure to curate/share/perform (barf) that I end up attaching to most of my other creative work.

I think that’s why I still love them so much and want to share some here and print some (finally) for my walls—I’m proud of these photos and the mindset they came from.

What activities get you into the creative flow?