CraigBILL

Most people don't know this: Yellowstone National Park is an active super volcano! And that was exactly the reason for my visit... Yellowstone sports some three hundred geysers and over ten thousand geothermal features. Yellowstone is essentially a volcanic park.

I was not sure which geysers were going to be active in the early morning that I hiked out among the upper geyser basin - also home to the famous Old Faithful geyser. Walking out among the various geysers and hot pools in the early cold morning is like being on another planet! Geyser eruptions streams and huge steam banks filled the atmosphere all around me. Being a cold 19 degree morning allowed the steam to really show off and play in the predawn light.

I finally came to my favorite geyser, Castle Geyser, and it was in full eruption. I still had some more time before the sun broke the horizon, so I had time to position my camera to take full advantage of the coming rays. I could just imagine what the scene would look like when the sunlight crashed into the thick, sulfur-rich steam eruptions. And I was not disappointed! The constantly changing steam made for an alien like environment allowing me to capture one of my favorite photographs of Yellowstone - Sleeping Dragons.