Orange Bacterial Thermophiles
Open Edition
My strongest memory of this picture was the smell of sulfur. As the clouds of steam wafted towards me the smell of sulfur was overpowering. My eyes stung and my lungs burned. The other memory I have is the amazing way the blue color of the center of the pool seemed to travel up into the steam. I am not sure how that works, I know it is impossible for bacteria or color to travel up with steam. Yet I know what I saw. As the sun shined down into the spring it seemed to glow. It was a 95 degree day and yet the steam poured off the spring. You could feel the heat flowing off the nearly boiling water. It was such an overload for the senses I had to stand there and admire the view for a while before I even pulled out the camera. The leading lines of the orange bacteria were too much to ignore, they screamed to be included in the image. I framed up the scene with my wide angle lens and captured the image between blasts of steam which fogged up my lens.