I am a child of the west who grew up wandering in the mountains and wide open spaces. The adults in my life showed me the wonders of Yellowstone from Old Faithful to the delicate filaments waving in the overflow of a gentle hot spring. Mom generously shared her knowledge of how to identify the flowers in a small bouquet picked from the sagebrush meadow near our cabin in Colorado or the tracks in the mud by the stream where my father fished. Cousin Ruthie showed me ways to capture all that enthralled me with a camera.
These family teachers of my youth instilled a deep love of learning and fueled the fires of my intense love of detail and documenting. As a life-long learner as well as a teacher by training, I find deep satisfaction in sharing ways to enrich your life through field journaling. Once you understand the basic concepts, it can apply to literally anything.
My personal focus on this blog stems from my passion for the geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone. What captures my attention most are the subtle (and not so subtle) changes that constantly bring me back time and again. I also adore tracking the changes in the season that can be found in my phenology pages.
I believe life is savored more deeply when creating; therefore, I create daily. Creating leaves little room for drama, whining or complaining, but opens the door to deep gratitude for a life fully lived.
2021 Update
As a writer/photographer, I live a life full of creativity and passion. Finding balance comes from breathing in the world and breathing out creations. Heading outside to gather photos and notes, and coming back to use them as the foundation for my work.
Having grown up with family in Cody and family cabins in the Jackson area, the Yellowstone area provided the backdrop for a million memories. Moving to Cody in 2014 felt like coming home.
In 2004, I reignited my passion for photography and documenting life through photos and words. Over the years, I grew my photo and writing skills while adding in website design and management and general design skills.
With a background in teaching, shifting to becoming a blogger to share information about Yellowstone came naturally. I’ve published a guide book to Yellowstone’s West Thumb Geyser Basin (affiliate link) and have another, more general, guide book in the works. I love large challenges and managing multiple projects, even if it slows them all down a bit.
A few of my large ongoing passion projects are:
• Photo documentation of YNP’s thermal features
• Phenology of the greater Yellowstone area
• Yellowstone Naturalist – this website
I offer fine art photography on a variety of surfaces (metal, canvas, framed and matted prints).
My stock photography offerings can be licensed at my stock photo site.
© Copyright
The photos, videos, artwork and writing on this site are copyright to their respective creators. Most of the images (unless otherwise stated) are the property of me, Janet Jones. If you are interested in licensing or using any material from this site, you must first get permission from the copyright holder. You can license photos at my stock photography site – if there’s an image you don’t see there that you would like to license, just fill out the form on this page. Copyright infringement is taken very seriously here as photos and words make up a good portion of my income.