#TBT: Photography, Great Friends and Yellowstone

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by Skip Cohen

​After so many years of sharing Throwback Thursday images, it's getting harder to share anything new. So, while I've shared a lot over the years about our winter trips into Yellowstone, since we're in the first week of Spring and things are warming up, why not go back to a few cold days in Montana and Wyoming?

For ten years, going back to February/March in the early 90s, Duncan MacNab organized a snowmobile trip. It started with four of us and grew to 25 "knuckleheads", mostly from the photographic industry. The collection above is from a few different trips over the years.

Everyone knows the expression, " He who dies with the most toys wins." Well, we used to say that Duncan, years before he passed away, had already won. He clearly had the most toys, including a gas grill on runners. On one trip, he towed it up to 8000 feet and grilled cheeseburgers!

But my point for this Throwback Thursday isn't so much about the trips as about the memories, thanks to an industry we love deeply. The hardest part of aging is losing friends...but the best part comes with all the memories, enhance and maintained by photography. Every image brings back moments from the past, as vivid as if they happened yesterday.

In 2016, we were fly-fishing in Montana and caught up to Duncan and Chris one night for dinner in Bozeman. Although the three of us hadn't been together in close to 20 years, it was as if the last conversation ended with a comma - all the jabs and jokes started flowing immediately.

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Think about it for just a second - what would the world be like without photography? How dull would life be without photographs that bring with them incredible memories, even when they're bittersweet?

If you're relatively new to the industry, take the time to think about the "magic" you possess with the simple click of the shutter. You're in the business of helping people turn the intangible into memories they can hold in their hands and share for a lifetime. That's an incredible responsibility and your clients deserve the very best of your skills.

And to my good buddy Dunc - sure do miss ya, pal! Thanks to you, so many of us have great memories and stories that continue to make us laugh. We got to see a part of the world, Yellowstone in winter, a sight that few people will ever experience. Put a Yellowstone winter together with the humor and creativity from some of the finest photographers in the industry, and the memories redefine the meaning of the word joy.

I know I've promised in previous posts to stop using this quote by Jodi Picoult, but there's none better:​

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"This is what I like about photographs.
They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect."
Jodi Picoult

Happy Throwback Thursday!