Old Faithful–Three Times.

Yellowstone National Park

Buffalo Crossing Campground

10-01-2015

Yesterday, we thought that we would try to do something a little bit different. I said to the group, “Why don’t we try and paint Old Faithful with light? ” Nice idea, came the reply.

Jack, Kim and I started out at about 3:30pm. It is about and hour drive from our campsite to the main event, but like all drives in Yellowstone there were a couple of stops. The first one was a bull elk, but he proved to be too far to evectively photograph. The second stop was a family of elk just sitting and drinking in the stream.

One of the elk going for a walk.

We hit the Old Faithful parking area at about 5 PM, and we got to our spot on the sidewalk that ringed it just in time to watch it spout. That was about 5:30.

Here is Old Faithful in the late afternoon.

Knowing that she erupted about every 90 minutes we headed off and took a long walk on the boardwalk that spreads out around the site. There were many vents filled with steam, mud pots boiling and a nice stream that ran through the middle of it all.

By then it was time to try and setup to get the sunset behind her. it was a little early for sunset, but we shot it anyway.

And here is Old Faithful at ALMOST sunset.

As the main event wouldn’t happen for another 90 minutes we headed into the cafeteria for dinner. Then, while it was still semi-light we setup again, and waited for it to get dark. I was little worried that my million watt light would not be strong enough to illuminate the geyser, but Kim, who was to be the light painter did an excellent job of slowly moving the beam up and down the stream of water, while Jack and I counted off the 30 second exposures.

And here she was completely dark and illuminated by our light!

The show only lasted for about 5 minutes. It looked like the small crowd of people who sat and watched us enjoyed the show also. In the distance a beautiful lightening show had begun. Jack started to capture it, so I was not to be left standing there, camera in hand so I tried to capture it also. I never could time it exactly to get a lightening strike, but I did get some very interesting clouds being lit by it.