Another morning and another shot at the wolves along the Madison. Didn’t see them this time but then there is always tomorrow. With the break in the clouds creating some nice light along the river we stopped for a few minutes to play with the steam and the Lodge Pole Pines. Now in this scenario anything is possible. Tight shots, wide angle shots, black and white, HDR, anything wanted to convey what was going on. kinda obvious which way i went. I always like when the sun comes through the steam creating that great streaky steam look. The contrast between the vertical lines of the trees to the diagonal lines of the light in the steam really pops.
The river scene wasn’t the only place that i was looking at for images. Behind the snow coach down the way a little bit was a section of Lodge Poles that were in great light and were very clean. By clean I mean that there wasn’t much on the ground, only a couple of bent trees but most were perfectly vertical. It was a nice little section that again had a great contrast between the vertical and diagonal lines.
On up the river to Old Faithful. The Old Faithful Lodge is closed in winter but Snow Lodge is open. At Old Faithful in winter are three Uriks. Uriks are very simple structures that can be broken down to store and then reassembled when needed. Nothing fancy wooden sides covered with canvas to trap in the warmth. Each one comes with its own pellet fire place. These buildings are where the snow coaches and snowmobilers go to get warm and eat lunch. That’s what we did. Afterward of course we went for the Old Faithful eruption. It was a good day to go out for the show, not full cloud cover just a few patches of blue sky. The wind was the only down side. With wind the steam and spray from the eruption forces it to go sideways and not stay straight up. When there is wind the geyser is crooked and doesn’t achieve its full height. It was still a good show.
After a quick look through the new visitor center at the lodge, we saddled up and headed down the road to Midway Geyser Basin. Midway is where Grand Prismatic Geyser is located. it was one of the largest and most spectacular geyser pools in the park. From the boardwalk that goes partially around the pool one gets a glimpse of its size; however, it impossible to see the entire pool from the ground. The only way to see the pool in it’s entirety is from the sky. It’s a big beautiful pool. So, since we couldn’t focus on the entire pool we looked around for other aspects.
Other aspects, like the pine trees as you walk around the pools. The clouds were pretty nice at the time, they kept moving through at the time making for pockets of blue sky and cloudy skies. This is a great place for using a wide angle like a 16mm fisheye, for me it was the 14-24mm. It’s a great place to go wide surely because the area is so vast. The geyser basin sits up higher than the surrounding area so we can see more.
Beautiful Place.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S Nikkor 70-200 VrII, AF-S Nikkor 24-70 f2.8, AF-S Nikkor 14-24 f2.8, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film