Geyser dreams

Gallery: LandscapePosted November 4, 2011143 views5 comments

Of all my images to date, I feel like this one is the one shot I regret NOT using a tripod. When we arrived at the parking lot it was so full I decided to not bring the tripod as it would take up quite a bit of boardwalk (for those familiar with the area should know that summers are busy and the boardwalks never seem wide enough). On the other hand, I find it to be one of my most unique images that I've shot. This is a photo from excelsior geyser I shot last summer in yellowstone. I wanted to photograph grand prismatic in all it's glory with beautiful puffy clouds all above. However, before approaching grand prismatic I was taken away by the colors of excelsior geyser. When I looked up at the sky in this direction I saw that huge ominous cloud just lingering above the steam with a few trees poking through. There were scattered storms throughout the park creating some dramatic sky. With slight winds and watching the steam flow side to side using a tripod and some ND filters would probably have given me a much more dreamy effect. Had neither of those at the time unfortunately. Would definitely like to hear some feedback on this. It's quite different than a lot of my landscape work I think.

Canon 7d
canon 17-40mm @32mm
1/2000 sec
ISO 400
f/10

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Stan Rose on November 5, 2011 at 1:14 PM

Im not familiar with your work, so i cant say how different this is, but i think your comments pretty much sum up the reason why im the first one to comment on this--this is a classic example of "Damn--i wish i had thought of this beforehand..." regrets that we landscape photographers are very familiar with, cause we've all been there before. I think this is a subject that was probably extremely impressive to see in person--but how do you translate that experience to a photo?? Unless you just get lucky or are unbelievably gifted, it can only come through careful fore-thought and planning, and i think that's what's missing here. To be more specific, i think this would have been more effective with less steam in the shot, so there is more for the viewer to hang his/her hat on. Personally, I think its a pretty cool shot, but i like weird stuff so im trying to explain the relative lack of comments here

Registered on September 15, 2005, 836 Posts, 17099 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Seaver on November 5, 2011 at 5:51 PM

Peter, I have a 2nd home 30 min from Yellowstone so I get to spend a lot of time there and know this location pretty well. This is a neat shot where you've got black sky and clouds set against blue foreground with steam clouds. The colors and "clouds" mess with your head because without the trees it's not clear which way is up. It's probably worth thinking about not linking this to Yellowstone, because there's nothing easily recognizable as Yellowstone in the image. I think that that it would be nice to see some texture in the black cloud to reduce the attention that the large black area gets. After that, a crop without the foreground rocks might be useful. Then you'd have some very mystical trees poking out of clouds with an untextured blue foreground.

Registered on January 23, 2011, 1103 Posts, 17270 Comments

Comment posted by Peter Coskun on November 5, 2011 at 6:51 PM

@Stan- I actually thought hard about the decision to leave the tripod back at the car hah. Probably a good five minutes weighing the pros and cons. I guess what I was most concerned with was someone tripping over a tripod leg and falling off the boardwalk or having my camera go lens first into the thermal areas. Obviously there is a lot I probably would have done differently had I used/had the tools. I just really liked the contrast between the colors.

@Mark- You are very lucky to have a place there. I guess I couldn't associate this with yellowstone, but there is so much of yellowstone that is photographed and maybe less related that get's associated with yellowstone. Granted this is just a small portion of one specific area. I'll try to see about restoring some detail in that cloud. I actually like the idea of taking off the bottom, but should it be a square crop? Obviously I want to keep some of the blue that's at the bottom.

Registered on October 31, 2011, 170 Posts, 1240 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Metternich on November 6, 2011 at 11:29 AM

Woah, that is some atmosphere!!!! Stratospheric!

Registered on June 19, 2009, 276 Posts, 6240 Comments

Comment posted by Aaron Feinberg on November 7, 2011 at 6:22 AM

Pretty trippy shot...very cool. Kudos :)

aF

Registered on October 26, 2009, 399 Posts, 2789 Comments