A day in Yellowstone, Part One

Tuesday morning greeted us with bitter cold temperatures... I'm not sure what the temp actually was, but it felt like it was around 20 to 25 degrees. There wasn't a lick of wind, though, and its always good NOT to have wind when its cold! Jake and Stuart already had our sunrise location picked out, which was on a lovely little body of water known as Swan Lake. As we made the drive to Swan Lake, we passed several geothermal areas that were throwing up quite a bit of steam in the cold morning air. It was rather surreal to see all this steam drifting skyward as we passed the geothermal areas... it felt like we were on a different planet.

After shooting sunrise at Swan Lake we made a quick stop at "Roaring Mountain", so named because of the sounds emitted as steam escapes from the many vents along the hillside. Next we drove for a little while and stopped at this small river alongside the road, where we had fun shooting the running water.

One of my favorite things to do when shooting rapidly moving water is to use my telephoto zoom lens to move in tight on sections of the water and create abstract-type images, like the ones seen below:

Once we had our fill of the small river, we headed to a big river... actually THE big river... the Yellowstone River, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Easily one of the most popular places in Yellowstone, we had to take turns with lots of other photographers in order to get the images seen below. It was such a beautiful spot... and such an amazing, powerful waterfall! Lower Falls is 308 feet high, almost twice the height of Niagara Falls.