Cold Front

The brief was one line: put the Grenadier Quartermaster in winter. Yosemite in a heavy season answered it more literally than anyone had in mind.

The park was coming apart under the weight of the snow while we were in it. Trees down across the roads. Avalanches running on the slopes. Snowfall heavy enough that the light never properly arrived and the valley walls kept disappearing and coming back between squalls. Conditions like that make the decisions for you. You stop chasing the frame you pictured on the drive up and shoot what the day is actually doing, which here meant a truck reading as the one solid, deliberate object in a landscape behaving badly.

The tree-tunnel back roads and El Capitan in the falling snow came out of driving between closures rather than following a route. That is the version of the Quartermaster the brief was really asking for, and it is not one you can schedule. Nothing in these frames is dry.