Grand Prismatic Spring – Mist
Hot water from the Prismatic Spring shelf flowed into a “holding” pond before it entered the stream below. Hot water entering a cooler pool of water generated a steady mist. When I took this image, I was thinking black and white to express the eerie feeling of the mist.
Grand Prismatic Spring Pastel
Mist periodically gently flowed across the springs. The bight sun shining through left a warm feeling of pastels. This time patience paid off as I waited for the mist to clear then re-enter.
Grand Prismatic Springs
Slow flowing water from the springs also left small rivulets. These colorful ones were a sharp contrast to the grey mineral flats in my prior post.
Grand Prismatic Spring -Mineral Flats
As the hot mineral water flows out of the spring, it creates a series of mineral flats. This perspective was a flat grey. I decided to convert it to black and white, add contrast, and apply a slight gradient across the image..
Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park
A boardwalk runs along the edge of the spring. The reflection of people walking along the walk caught my eye when the mist periodically lifted. I did not have the foresight to be patient and take an image with a light mist to create the mystic feeling I felt. Lesson learned; Be ready to capture a “feeling” and not just a “picture”.
Grand Prismatic Hot Spring
The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is the largest hot spring in the United States and the third largest in the world. The immensity of the spring is very difficult to capture from the ground level. I had my 24-105mm lens and only could capture a portion of the spring. I could not change to my 14mm wide angle because of the extreme harsh mist generated by the hot spring. On my next visit I will make two trips to photograph from the ground level. The first will be with my wide aperture lens to try to capture as much of the overall grandness of the spring. The second will be with my mid-range zoom to capture the details. To get a full photo of the spring, one needs to hike up the trail on the hill above the spring. The trail is currently (June 2017) in construction and not accessible..
I found the details of the water and mud beds below fascinating. Lines, colors, and reflections intrigued me. I will display images of some of those images in future posts.
Onomea Falls Water Color
I recently visited the Hawaiian Botanical Gardens, near Hilo, Hawaii. My mission was to photograph creatively. I did not focus on the overall beauty of the environment around me. My focus was on separate scenes, small vignettes, and macro detail while using creative photographic techniques.
For this image, I took multiple exposures covering the range from the bright water and sky to the dark shadows. When I brought them together into an HDR, all the tonalities were captured. However, I lost the feeling of the dense tropical rainforest setting. So I decided to play a little with Topaz’s new ‘Studio” software. I used the watercolor effect to create this image.
I haven’t given up on the natural presentation of this image yet. It will require a lot of luminance masking with layers to get the natural image that I saw in my mind. I will do this at a future time when I am in a very patient mood.
Water, Rocks, and Moss
The textures and shapes of this little stream against moss-covered rocks caught my eye. I blurred the flow of the water to capture the soft feeling of this little stream. Color was not important, in fact, it detracted from the feeling I had. Converting to black and white made the image for me.
Flowing Grass Abstract
I saw some soft flowing grass with different colors and shades. I thought it would make a good abstract. I did a diagonal pan along the shape of the flowing grass. In post processing, I added a little contrast and softened the image.
The textures of the various plants, moss, and rock caught my eye. The hardness of the rock, the softness of the moss, the glossy smoothness of the the blade-type plant coupled with the variegated shades of the three-leafed plant attracted me. I converted to B&W to focus on the various tonalities and textures. Just experimenting …