Well, not literally but, we did spend the day in the Upper Geyser Basin wandering around the thermals surrounded by hot steam and pools. It was a great day starting after a hearty breakfast (which was a good thing as I kept the guys out for six hours and three miles hiking with our heavy gear) where we headed down the path towards Castle Geyser just before sunrise. As we approached, the sun broke through the partly cloudy skies bathing Castle in beautiful warm, morning light. The steam showed up nicely against the darker sky. While I was photographing Castle, I was thinking about how it must have seemed to those intrepid travelers way back in the days of William Henry Jackson who first photographed the area so, when I was finishing the images, I decided to go with an old time look by combining color with black and white…

Traveling farther along the trail I found another great crusty edge to add to my collection from the previous weeks. It was impossible to get enough depth of field from the front edge to the rear with my 70-200mm so, I opened up my aperture to 5.6 and set the lens to manual focus while I focused and shot in increments knowing I would use Helicon Focus to do the heavy lifting of blending the sharp areas of each image together into one frame giving me otherwise impossible depth of field…

The sun played hide and seek all morning giving us a variety of photo opportunities and by the time we came to Beauty Pool, we had partly cloudy skies which lent themselves perfectly to the scene. A fisheye was necessary with it’s 180 degree angle of view to include the entire pool in the frame…

Six hours and over three miles later we were all hungry and a bit tired so we took a break for lunch and downloaded our images before heading out for the last eruption of Old Faithful before sunset. The conditions were great with the sun peeking through the clouds, softly lighting up the steam and a dark sky background. A herd of bison were grazing around the base of Old Faithful enjoying the easy access to food and the warmth of the thermals when we arrived. One cow graciously paused for a photo before moving off…

Unfortunately, the bison moved off before Old Faithful erupted (wouldn’t that have been a shot with the bison in the foreground and the eruption in the background but, it was not meant to be). We positioned ourselves with the best angle for light, skies and composition and waited for the show. While waiting I photographed the steam plume. There was very little wind so the steam rose straight into the air…

Right on time (give or take ten minutes), Old Faithful sent a geyser of water hurtling into the sky…

I usually prefer the steam of Old Faithful more than the actual eruption in the winter as the cold air causes the steam to almost hide the geyser of water but, tonight, with the light, the dark sky, our position and lack of wind we could see a good portion of the eruption.

Here are some Old Faithful facts I found on Wikipedia that I think you may find interesting…
Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 U.S. gallons (14–32.000 litre) of boiling water to a height of 106–185 feet (30–56 m) lasting from 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet (44 m). The highest recorded eruption was 185 feet (56 m) high. Eruptions often occur about 90 minutes apart, but this interval can range from 45 to 125 minutes on occasion. More than 137,000 eruptions have been recorded. Harry M. Woodward first described a mathematical relationship between the duration and intervals of the eruptions (1938).[citation needed] Old Faithful is not the tallest or largest geyser in the park; that title belongs to the less predictable Steamboat Geyser.

Images captured with Nikon D3X, AF-S 24-70mm, AF 16mm Fisheye, AF-S 70-200mm, TC-17E II on Lexar Digital Media