Home > Drives > Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 02

Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 02

article and photographs by Ben Lincoln

As noted in the introduction, the first day of this drive was the eleven-hour-plus trip from Seattle to Bozeman. I got an early start on the second day, and was well on my way to the West Entrance of Yellowstone by the time the sun came up.

It was too early to book a campsite, so my first stop was along the Madison River. As I was taking the various exposures for this first photo, I noticed a single bison ambling slowly along the road in my general direction. I hoped he would stick to the roadway itself, but it soon became clear he was going to wander onto the grassy area where I had my camera gear set up, so I had to quickly (but calmly) disassemble everything and get into my car. As a result, there's no ultraviolet version of this image.

For those who haven't seen one in person, bison are enormous; males can weigh over 800kg (1800 pounds). Most of the time Yellowstone's bison are calm, but (as visitors are frequently reminded) they are wild animals, and if they feel threatened they can (and do) attack humans in self-defence. One of the most common signs at Yellowstone depicts a tiny, gored human being thrown through the air by the force of a charging bison, but unfortunately even this blunt warning is not 100% effective at convincing people to keep their distance, and so every year there are bison-related injuries within the Park.

I saw this particular animal several times during this visit, and nicknamed him The Loneliest Bison because he was always far away from the big herds. By the time he'd moved to a safe distance, the sun would have been shining right into my camera, so I turned around and shot in the opposite direction.

By this time, the campsite at Madison River was open, so I reserved a spot and then got back to taking pictures. I started at the nearby West Thumb Geyser Basin, but was only able to capture one set before rainclouds moved in.

While I waited for the bad weather to pass by, I made my way to an area which was sunny at the time - the section of the Yellowstone River at Fishing Bridge.

Making my way back to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, I shot quite a few more sets of the pools. The water in these pools can be quite hot - the delicate blue colours at the centers of many are the result of heat-sterilization. However, at the edges the temperature drops enough to support microbial mats that thrive in the warm conditions. These mats are the source of the orange, red, and yellow colours in the geothermal areas of the Park. A few range into green and other colours. I suspected these bacteria would appear even more interesting with the inclusion of near-infrared and ultraviolet-A photos, and attempted to collect at least one such set of exposures in each major area of Yellowstone.

Somewhat to my surprise, I discovered during processing that bacteria mats which appear the same shade to human eyes vary dramatically in multispectral images. The most dramatic contrast is between Mammoth Hot Springs (which I visited on Day 4) and Midway Geyser Basin (near the end of this article) - both of them are a rusty orange to us, but the Midway mats have a dazzling ultraviolet-A reflectivity that the Mammoth Hot Springs microbes seem to lack. Other sites exhibit similar (if less-pronounced) variations. If anything, I didn't take enough photos, assuming that one orange bacteria was the same as the next. Determining how much coverage to get of a set of related subjects is always one of the big challenges (at least for me) of shooting in bands of the spectrum that we can't see directly. It's also one of the greatest rewards - due to the frequent surprises - but because time is limited there's always a tradeoff in terms of which photos are taken and which are mentally bookmarked for another day (or year).

This first major set of imagery made me even more appreciative than usual of my WhiBal grey card. The blue tones of the hottest pools are notoriously tricky to capture, and I think they came across very well as the result of proper white balance.

The next time I shoot in this type of environment, I plan on bringing the polarizing filter which I left at home on this trip. I'd be very interested to see further into the pools if at all possible.

The rainy weather had passed well to the west by this time, so I backtracked to Black Sand Basin.

Just as I was finishing the first shot, I heard my car alarm go off, and walked back to discover that it had made friends with a pair of ravens. They were quite loud themselves, and did not seem bothered at all by the alarm.

A little while later, it became apparent that they had not picked my car by random chance, as evidenced by their next choice.

Black Sand Basin is one of two areas in which I noticed an intricate pattern of thin terraces created by the bacteria mats (the other is Midway Geyser Basin, below). Similar to the variety of multispectral colours, it seems that different microbes produce different physical structures. Mammoth Hot Springs' bacteria produce terraces as well, but on a much grander scale.

I completed my backtrack by revisiting the section of the Madison River closest to the West Entrance. I had wanted to reshoot my first photo, but oddly enough couldn't find the same spot again.

In the last light of the day, I stopped at Midway Geyser Basin.

This area of the Park is home to Grand Prismatic Spring, a truly titanic hotspring. It is so large I couldn't think of a way to capture a good wide-angle image with the equipment I'd brought, so I opted for a pair of close-ups. I was particularly pleased with the first; the striking pattern made by the bacteria in the near-infrared is completely invisible without this type of imaging system, and looks like a strange alien lace or the webbing of veins on a placenta.

When I saw the first processed results of my multispectral photos, I thought they looked familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Then it hit me - the colours were like NASA's images of Io (Jupiter's violently volcanic moon). For some examples, see Io in true colour, Io in NIR-G-V[iolet] false colour, and Io in unspecified false colour.

Astrobiologists seem to think it's unlikely that Io is home to even bacterial life (possibly due to the extreme radiation in the area), but I was inspired to see if there was a "sulfur cycle" analogous to the "carbon cycle" most people are familiar with on Earth, and there is. In fact, some of Yellowstone's microbes are among the bacteria that make use of the sulfur cycle. It may be a coincidence - I'm certainly no biologist, astro- or otherwise - but I wouldn't be at all surprised if simple forms of life existed on Io. I do think that Europa is a safer bet (others have commented that the material in the cracks on Europa's surface looks a lot like algae - especially in the near-infrared - and I agree), but I hope NASA takes a chance on sending a probe to Io's surface too.

Right before the sun set completely, I took a final set of photos of the section of the Firehole River which passes by Midway Geyser Basin.

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Related Articles:
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Introduction
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 03
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 04 and 05
Yellowstone National Park

Last updated: 21 February 2011

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