The other day we went over to Fountain Paint Pots again. It’s a really cool spot that has many pools and many geysers. However, the geysers don’t go off that regularly. Fountain Geyser, Jet Geyser and Clepsydra are all on one giant geothermal, so in a way they kinda share the energy that is beneath them. After a good lunch and a few laughs watching the ravens patrol their parking lot, yes it is theirs they have learned how to open most anything including zippers, we started walking down the trail to the pots. This one i can never remember the name of but always liked. It has a great blue with orange sides which really stands out. The bluer the water the hotter it is, so needless to say it’s a hot pot.
Ironically enough the ground around the pools and thermals are incredibly mineral rich so it would be safe to assume that trees should be able to live in them; however, the immense heats kills anything in such areas. The minerals do provide a characteristic to the trees that can’t be found anywhere else, the base of the trunks turn white. The trees are dead but the bases are white. his creates that spooky dead forest look. There have a been a lot of great shots of these trees so i thought I’d give it a try. I stood in the steam for a while taking burst shots trying to get that one with the right look but never was able to. Still ended up a decent black and white i think, but for sure something to come back to.
Having spent so much time at leather pool the last time we were at Fountain Paint Pots, i thought i would walk down the boardwalk to the other pools. As i already said there are three other small geysers and it just so happened that Fountain Geyser was going of that day and we managed to catch it. It has like a 12-13 hour wait between eruptions so catching it is somewhat hard to predict, which made it nice to watch. I was surprised at how high it actually got, didn’t think it would be so high. The other amazing difference compared to others in the park and this is something that can’t be seen in my image, the water coming up is more blue than at other spots. It’s kinda unique and unique makes for great images.
The last geyser was Clepsydra, it’s small and colorful. It pretty much stays on all the time, small little bursts. It’s thermals like these that have many options for photographing. I kept it simple with a 70-200 and made simple clicks. Nothing really fancy in post either, just brought out the color in the soil a little bit more. I saved the complexity to the two above, the others don’t need anything else which i like. Keeping it simple is a good thing.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S Nikkor 14-24, AF-S Nikkor 70-200 VrII, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film