Textures of Yellowstone Summer
As we travel, we seem to find there are certain features that stand out about an area. Maybe it’s the hummingbirds in Costa Rica. Maybe it’s the walls of Tuscany. Maybe it’s the flowers of a desert springtime. For us, in Yellowstone, the features that stand out are the textures.
Yellowstone is rightfully famous for the geothermal features. But as photographers it is hard to get photographically excited about Old Faithful. Millions of photos have been taken of Old Faithful just this summer. But by spending a little more time in the park, we noticed the geothermal areas also had a wide variety of textures. And then we started seeing textures all around the park. There are the smooth pool surfaces and the rough edges at hot springs.
There are the textures where deposits have built up for millennia creating ledges on ledges on ledges.
And the frothing of the mud pots generates textures that hint at somewhere that may exceed Dante’s imagination, a place of boiling souls screaming to escape.
Yet some pools are calm with a zen-like, meditative feel to their texture. How long does the bubble exist?
Besides the geothermal areas, the grasses of midsummer are a tangle of lines and texture and color shifting away from the greens of spring.
Even the wildlife contribute to the palette of texture.
And as the grass dries and the bison shed, eat and procreate, the hot springs, mud pots and geysers provide a show of building new textures.
Meanwhile above the geyser basins and hot springs, above the bison and the grass, the sky is also textured and hints at changes to come and the end of the shortest season.
