This oft-photographed tree has now "passed away" but is nonetheless still standing in the swale of a Hayden Valley rise that is particularly sculptural when covered with snow and perfectly illuminated by winter's slanted light. Every winter photo tour stops so everybody can try their hand at it. I try not to, but while keeping warm in the snow coach when most of my companions got out to get their shot, I shot it with my Tamron 150-600 (everybody else does it wide) through the open coach door. I wasn't happy with the lack of interest in what I got - it was not a good moment light-wise - until I converted it to grayscale and inverted the image. Now it's not the same idea as nearly every other photographer, including the first couple of professionals to notice how beautiful the scene can be - most notably, well-known Yellowstone specialist Tom Murphy ("Hayden Valley Sunstar" and "Hayden Valley Snowdrifts") for whom the tree is named, and another favorite photographer of mine, Tom Mangelsen ("First Crossing") has used.

There are several very good takes on this tree "in situ" on Flickr, just search on Hayden Valley tree.

I hope my image reveals something about this tree that the other pics of it don't.

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Make:	NIKON CORPORATION
Model:	NIKON D500
Exposure:	1/2500 sec
Aperture:	f/25.0
ISO Speed:	2500
Focal Length:	240 mm
Lens:	150.0-600.0 mm f/5.0-6.3