On sev­eral vis­its to Yel­low­stone, dri­ving out to pho­to­graph at dawn, I fre­quently passed this stand of dead trees along the road north of Old Faith­ful. The first few times, hav­ing some­where else in mind, I didn’t stop. But there was always a beau­ti­ful mist among the trees, and finally I couldn’t resist. It turns out there’s a hot spring uphill from these trees, and the over­flow seeps down into the grove; the warmth of the water cre­ates the mist. At some point in the past, the over­flow killed the trees, and they acquired the char­ac­ter­is­tic white min­er­al­iza­tion at the base of the trunks that you see at many Yel­low­stone springs. All this, and the fact that the sun rose directly behind the trees and fil­tered in through the mist, cre­ated a ghostly feel­ing in the chill of the morn­ing. An irre­sistible sub­ject for Motion|Pictures, my impres­sion­ist land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy series.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS Dig­i­tal Rebel XTi
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 45mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/22, 1/8 second