I drove through parts of Yellowstone a week ago, just a day after the Park (as it’s known locally) opened to automobiles. (I had been hoping to bike in the car-free weeks before that, as I normally do, but the weather was uncooperative.) Despite my regular visits, and posts to this blog, I realized I’ve never shown any photographs of the thermal features for which Yellowstone is justly famous. I have made a few before—surprisingly few—but somehow they never appealed much to me. For some reason I can’t put my finger on, this time felt different, and there are several images I’m willing to publish.
The first is of Roaring Mountain. It doesn’t truly live up to its name from the nearby road, whence these images were made, but it can be pretty loud if you’re up quite close (as I happen to know from previous experience). The image below is just a detail view with a longer lens of an area contained in the image above. Because the sun was not too high, and I was facing east, the mountain appears very dark, though the sun brightens the steam rising from the many vents. If your vision of Hell is dark, perhaps this will serve.
Next stop down the road was the Norris geyser basin, which does not have any sizable and regular geysers. It was odd going ’round on the trails. Where there was boardwalk above the warm ground, it was covered in three feet of packed snow, unmelted by virtue of being held in the colder air. But most of the ground was not only clear of snow, but looked achingly hot in the sun, now higher and falling on flatter, wetter ground. Steam was around you as well as the subject, making the blasted trees all the more mysterious.
I was interested to notice that these two desolated regions, deprived of most visible life by the heat and the chemistry, came out near opposites in terms of tonality: too dark and too bright. Which is closer to your idea of devastation?
In contrast, waterfall results did not live up to last year’s at this season. In fact, I scarcely wanted to take photographs of the falls at all. But I did find another subject there…to appear in a future post.
I’m wondering: what makes you ready for a subject or not?
Steve,
I find both versions scary, the steam from the dark mountains as well as the light, burned out regions. Perhaps, my fear is caused by the injuries of the brother of a friend of mine who fell into one of those boiling cauldrons and was severely injured.
I have never been to Yellowstone. On our last trip to Montana and Wyoming, Troels did not feel like facing the crowds in the Park.
What makes me ready for a subject? Practise? This summer, I want to spend time drawing faces to learn to paint them better.
Steve:
The second image is a definite winner.
For devastation, I vote for the top image. I actually find it more compelling than the second, because the trees give it a sense of scale, and the sky emphasizes the darkness of the hills. There’s something strangely ethereal about the two bottom images.
In terms of being ready for a subject, if something keeps appearing again and again in my sketchbooks, eventually it ends up turning into a series of paintings. But it can take years.
Birgit,
I was actually a little surprised at how scary they came out as images. The places themselves are less so, in part because there is a context of more ordinary forest and so on that I am leaving out. But they certainly are potentially dangerous to the unwary. A few spots in the backcountry even emit poisonous gases.
Jay and David,
I included the first image as an overview with more to situate you and induce a reaction via just those elements David mentions. But with Jay, I also like the second one. It seems to fit into a mode I sometimes engage in of an all-over texture that is less situated as a part of the real world, and more flattened as if on a screen. Some previous examples are willows and branches against tree trunks from my Sourdough Trail series. More in the same vein from a different Yellowstone location will be in an upcoming post.
David,
That ethereal effect owes much to all the steam around, sometimes even enveloping me.
As for subject readiness, I guess I had a few years of Birgit’s practice and David’s sketches before these really grabbed me. I haven’t yet looked back at the earlier work; I wonder if I’ll find it compelling now or not?
Steve:
I shall now further clarify. The first image is too scenic when compared to the second. In the first image I become engrossed in speculations and memories. I think about steam floating around the Mt. St. Helens caldera as seen from afar, and I wonder about the trees on the ridge line: are they dead or just wintering? If dead, it looks like they were fairly mature – so how recently did this mountain begin its roaring? Aesthetic appreciation is foregone by the time I’m done with these lines of thought. The second cuts to the chase and provides me with a well-composed admixture of mutually supportive elements with few or no distractions. I like that in a fudge brownie and I do so here as well.
Jay,
Thanks for the readings, it’s really helpful to hear that. I take the comparison of my work to a fudge brownie as a great compliment. If chocolate content is a measure of success, I’m doing much better than a couple years ago when one photograph suffered comparison to a chocolate chip cookie–with white chocolate yet!
As for the trees, I think about half are dead. The hot springs sometimes change on a relatively fast time scale, geologically speaking. There are trees embedded in terraced pools of calcium and other deposits.
Steve:
Perhaps chocolate chip ice cream as it appears to be a quiescently frozen confection.
Yellowstone is indeed geologically active and the Discovery Channel would have you believe that it might blow any minute. Reminds me of the famous Fly Geyser out in Nevada. Well drillers accidentally hit a source of hot water that has turned into perhaps the most outlandishly gorgeous thing around.
Steve, I look forward to one day seeing your work featured on the Food Network.
Steve,
Just to put in my vote — for sheer devastation, number 2 is it. Hell might be a bit like # one, but #2 looks like the day after the battle (Civil War, perhaps), before the victims have been removed. The remaining verticle tree seems to me to enhance the sense of the waste of war (or of Ma Earth, indifferent to her offspring).
I’m not sure Yellowstone is about to blow — it’s one of those mysterious “hot spots” which may not be as dangerous as the upswelling cracking earth along the Pacific Rim. I need to check Wikipedia — Jer tells me it’s pretty good on such things.
Perhaps it’s too late to say so, but it’s not that I set out to convey devastation. I just liked the look of these places and wanted to photograph them. I guess the concept did occur to me while photographing, though, and probably influenced these images.
As far as Yellowstone blowing up, it’s true they are monitoring the doming up under the lake and other indicators, but I think we’re talking the usual geological indefinite tense. If I were worried about that level of risk I wouldn’t cross the street.
And Wikipedia has a thorough coverage of the possibilities, probabilities, less probabilities, time-lines, and usual speculations. Like you, crossing the street is something I worry about more.
And, as I forgot to note, not only does #2 feel more like devastation, but more to the point, I like it best.
I am searching for still life paintings randomly find your pieces. I think both first and second pictures are closer to the name of “Devastations dark and bright”. The the black and the white with the dark and bright just shocking into people’s heart.
The second one is part of the first. It seams intenting to make people to focuse onto that but it loses something moreover . A good picture is not only give people a visual feeling but also could give people a imagination space to think about it. The first piece did that in my opion.
tao,
Thanks for commenting. The first two images are definitely a more balanced combination of dark and bright elements, but I think of them as primarily dark. It was interesting to me that also predominantly bright images could convey something of devastation, though with a different feeling to it. I quite agree with what you said about “imagination space,” and I like that way of describing it!