Yellowstone, Old Faithful

[ArthurDent]

Comments and (especially) criticism greatly appreciated
Nikon D7000, 12-24mm f/4 at 24 mm. 1/640 sec at f/8.

[Airy]

you may get criticism, but not from me, this time at least

One nasty suggestion though :"get closer" (which I did in Iceland - got a bit wet in the process)

[ArthurDent]

you may get criticism, but not from me, this time at least

One nasty suggestion though :"get closer" (which I did in Iceland - got a bit wet in the process)

Thank you for your comment Airy. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on how it works out for you, they do not let anyone approach closer. I did crop out a good portion of the foreground from the original image, but didn't want to crop the top or sides because I'd lose some of the interesting sky in the process. Do you think it would improve the image to crop out more of the foreground, perhaps the top half of the clouds?

[ArthurDent]

Here it is with a tighter crop.

[Les Olson]

What do you want this image to tell me about Old Faithful?  That it is bigger than people imagine, or smaller than people imagine, or that it is over-run with tourists, or not over-run with tourists, or ... what?  The problem I have with it at present is I don't see an obvious answer. 

As John Szarkowski said, "It isn't what a picture is of, it is what it is about", and I know what yours is of, but I don't know what it is about.

[ArthurDent]

What do you want this image to tell me about Old Faithful?  That it is bigger than people imagine, or smaller than people imagine, or that it is over-run with tourists, or not over-run with tourists, or ... what?  The problem I have with it at present is I don't see an obvious answer. 

As John Szarkowski said, "It isn't what a picture is of, it is what it is about", and I know what yours is of, but I don't know what it is about.

Thank you for your comment, Les. I'm thinking about entering the photo in my local photo club's monthly contest. The contest theme this month is "landscapes." That prompted the original post, which included a good amount of the background land and sky scape. So, Old Faithful is the photographic element which draws the eye and makes the photo stand out, but the overall context of it's surroundings is important as well. The aspect of overrun with tourists/not overrun is unimportant in this image. If you want some solitude to witness the geyser eruption, you need only to get up early to go see it and you will have pretty much all the solitude you would like, although it didn't hurt in keeping the crowd down that the temperature was about 37F that morning. I hope that gives you some useful information.

[Airy]

The lack of contextual info is not a problem for me, as I do not know the place. What I see is a kind of vertical cloud opposed to horizontal ones, and a colour palette (green/magenta) that is far away from the conventional (blue/yellow) one.

By the way I prefer the (less) cropped version, as the foreground looks more interesting. On the cropped version it looks blurry because of the lesser downsampling I guess, and becomes a nuisance. In the first one, the foreground adds "depth".

So yes, I still advocate getting closer when it is about the geological phenomenon, but the initial picture works best for me. A crop (or zoom in) is not the same as getting closer, which is demonstrated above.

[ArthurDent]

Airy, thanks for your comment. In regards to the color palette, you will perhaps recall that most of Yellowstone lies within the caldera of a super volcano. Hence, the color of the ground is typical of what one sees around many western US volcanos, mostly red dirt. Another good example of similar ground coloration can be seen off of US 395 as it traverses the Owens Valley on the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, miles and miles of cinder cones and red soil.  Monument Valley also comes to mind, another area with a predominantly red/magenta landscape.

I also like the first crop better.

[Airy]

thanks for the great shots

[gryphon1911]

I like the wider perspective more, to be honest.  Not a fan of the clipped highlights to the left, although that is a very difficult exposure to get - it's not like you can HDR that! 

I'm heading that way in a few weeks time - looking forward to putting my take on America's first national park!!

Thanks for sharing.

[ArthurDent]

I like the wider perspective more, to be honest.  Not a fan of the clipped highlights to the left, although that is a very difficult exposure to get - it's not like you can HDR that! 

I'm heading that way in a few weeks time - looking forward to putting my take on America's first national park!!

Thanks for sharing.

Actually, it is a 5 shot HDR from Photomatix 6. The shot was completely blown out on the left side (I had to guess about any compensation I might need in advance, and I didn't have time to readjust anything once the geyser started to go off)  and so an HDR was the only way to recover the shot given that I guessed wrong. According to Lightroom, the highlights along the left edge of the plume  aren't clipped, but I'll be the first to admit, they must be right on the ragged edge of clipping. If I was going to shoot there again in the early morning, I'd plan on at least  -2 stops of exposure compensation. 

Have a great time, it is a magical place, really nothing like it anywhere else.

[gryphon1911]

Art,

I'm at work right now and not on a calibrated monitor...so it very well could be just the display I am seeing the image with right now is giving me a false view.   Should have thought of that and stated as such in my original post

[ArthurDent]

Art,

I'm at work right now and not on a calibrated monitor...so it very well could be just the display I am seeing the image with right now is giving me a false view.   Should have thought of that and stated as such in my original post

There are 3 areas I recall were still clipped out after I generated the HDR, on the lower right hand side, on the right middle and a small patch of clouds immediately above the plume. I'm going to go through my geyser shots tonight to see if there were any shots not clipped. I may have gotten lucky and had a momentary patch of clouds cover the sun and perhaps cut back on the ambient light. If so, I'll probably go with that image over this one even f the plume doesn't look as good as this one. Submitting a photo hat has any significant blown out areas is likely a losing proposition.

I wish I'd had the D500 back then, I'd have almost twice as many shots and the superb D500 metering system might have saved a lot of them.

The problem with shooting Old Faithful is that the hotels are immediately behind and to the right of my shooting position (there are 2 hotels). So if I was to move significantly around the circle to my left to get the light coming in at a different, and better, angle I'd be moving the hotels into the field of view. The site layout is not one a photographer would have chosen had he or she been in charge of the design.

[pluton]

I like the original, wider shot better:  The placement of the geyser in the context of the surrounding ground plus a beautiful sky is a good idea.  It's actually one of the better shots of O.F. I've ever seen.
However- The camera seems arbitrarily panned to the right, giving an unbalanced feeling.  And the burned-out white areas of the geyser are unfortunate.  Maybe a different developing strategy in LR (or Photo Ninja?) could bring the white areas under control.

[ArthurDent]

I needed to get the entire u shaped arc of blue into the image. Plus, the placement of the geyser to the left results in a good rule of thirds placement of the eye catching element. I'm not a slave to that rule, but I think it works in this image.

I need to do something with the blown out area and I'm experimenting with the  brushes on a virtual copy to see what can be done. If I get a good result, I'll post it for your critique. Thanks for your comments.