For anyone not used to getting up early, landscape photography can be a real chore. Most sights are best photographed near sunrise and sunset. In June and July in particular those can be pretty far apart! So it was refreshing to finish our morning adventures yesterday in Yellowstone National Park with one of the wonders of the world which really looks its best in mid-day in mid-summer…

In addition to being the largest hot spring in North America, Grand Prismatic is one of the most colorful. Mid-day in the late spring and summer really brings out the best of its color. The small organisms (thermophilic bacteria) which create most of the color get a lot more sunlight in the summer months and turn brighter colors—especially orange and red instead of the greens of winter. And when the sun is bright on them the colors do their best reflecting act. The water in the middle is very clear and naturally blue although unlike some of the other pools or most clear ponds this one was a dramatic aquamarine yesterday.

We were also fortunate to have some great clouds in an otherwise blue sky to help round out the rest of the image and almost no wind allowing the water to remain flat and reflective. You can’t go wrong with almost any lens choice, but for this image I went ultra-wide to capture the entire amazing scene I could see with my eyes, by using one of my new favorite lens, the Sigma 12-24mm (full frame) with my Nikon D700 (also full frame) with the lens zoomed all the way out to an amazing 12mm. I used f/22 to make sure and grab all the detail in the image, and to capture the tonal range from the white clouds to the lower shadows I bracketed three images and put them together with PhotomatixPro using the most “literal” settings (the colors are really that amazing, they don’t need any enhancement!)

I’ve photographed Yellowstone’s hot springs in both the summer and winter and they both have their charm. Summer brings crowds and dry often brown landscape (although a late, wet spring this year kept quite a lot of the park fairly green), while winter gives you some amazing snow backgrounds and a lot easier time framing shots without other people in them.

When you do go, make sure and allow plenty of time to wander slowly through the geyser basins (Grand Prismatic Springs is in the Midway Geyser Basin, just north of Old Faithful) in different lighting conditions. If you’re lucky and get a partly cloudy sky the scene will shift minute by minute.