Daniels Park

Author's Comments

The bison are the reason to come, but the geography is what makes the photograph. From the bluff above the herd, the Front Range stretches across the western horizon in a single uninterrupted line, Pikes Peak anchoring the south and Longs Peak holding the north, with Denver's prairie rolling out below in long golden swells. There are very few places where you can put a thousand pound animal in the foreground and a hundred miles of mountains in the background and have it all make sense in the same frame. I come here at dawn in late September, when the cottonwoods in the draws have started to turn and the bison are moving more than they will be by midday. The herd shifts slowly across the grass, and if you are patient and stay in your car, the animals will eventually arrange themselves in a way that the mountains agree with. That alignment is the photograph. It does not happen on demand. The park is quiet in a way that surprises people who expect a Denver Mountain Park to feel like Denver. It does not. It feels like the high prairie it actually is, sitting at six thousand feet with the wind coming off the foothills and almost nothing between you and the peaks except grass and distance. Stay in the vehicle. The bison are not props and they are not slow. Use a longer lens than feels necessary, and let the scale do the work it wants to do.

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