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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery One: Travel Abstractions -- Unlimited Thought > Sunrise, Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
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27-SEP-2006

Sunrise, Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006

The Firehole River seems to live up to its name, as columns of what seems to be smoke rises from its valley. Actually, they are plumes of steam created by the heat of Yellowstone’s hot springs and geysers clashing with the chill of dawn. I stress these plumes by under exposing this image, abstracting the ground into utter blackness. The steamy riverbanks become even more incongruous when seen in such an abstract context. The rising sun may incongruously burn a white-hot hole right through this image, but it’s the smoldering Firehole itself that steals the scene here.

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1/2000s f/11.0 at 13.2mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis05-Aug-2007 18:32
Thanks, Patricia, for noting that abstraction is a matter of a photographer's own decisions. I chose to expose my spot meter on the sun, turning the landscape black in the process. I tried many different points of exposure, resulting in varying degrees of abstraction. I decided to go as far as I could go here in making the earth, as you say, a "ground of black allowing the orange steam to billow its colors into our corneas and hearts." To some, the burned out patch of sky that is the sun would be a technical flaw and distraction. To me, it is a white abstract, representing our ultimate energy source. Without the warmth of the sun, we die. And with too much warmth from the sun, we die. This image, in its own way, is a study of nature in balance.
Patricia Lay-Dorsey05-Aug-2007 06:07
I'm with Ceci, this image just knocks me for a loop. As the kids say, like Wow! Your decision to allow the earth to become a ground of black allows the orange steam to billow its colors into our corneas and hearts. And the white-hot sun with its spreading fingers of prism colors...

Well, what can say but thank you for allowing this grandeur to be shared in this way.
Phil Douglis07-Feb-2007 19:27
Glad this stopped you in your click-tracks, Ceci -- this is one of few places on earth where one can photograph the earth's belches! I tried to keep the earth as dark as possible by exposing on the rising sun. The less we see of the ground, the more we feel the primeval nature of it.
Guest 07-Feb-2007 06:11
The earth primeval, belching steam and fire as it forms and cools. Or the campfires of early Americans in the long-ago. A stunner of a picture, ghostly, evocative, glorious. Stopped me in my click-tracks. I lingered over it for several minutes, marveling. Thank you!
Phil Douglis29-Jan-2007 05:43
Well said, Sam. Yellowstone is indeed alive, and we can see it's breath on a frosty morning. A rising sun always implies the passage of time, the dawning of a new day, and unlimited possibilities.
Sam Bliss29-Jan-2007 02:05
Yellowstone seems very much alive - a living and breathing world. The land rises and falls over time. The image speaks of possibilities.
Phil Douglis12-Jan-2007 18:30
I can see your mind is running along the paths of ancient gods today, Zandra. So you see doomsday here, the end of an old world and the beginning of a new. I can see how you imagined that. This image is filled with the tensions -- the smoldering fires of hell played against a rising sun, full of hope for a new day. I thought of that when I made this shot. So you and I are not that far apart on this one, afterall.
Guest 12-Jan-2007 17:40
Again, following my previsou comment on your black raven, my mind is allready set towards one direction. To view this picture riht after that one gives me a completly different view of it that i beleive it would had if i stumbled in to this picture at first. Speaking of ancient gods, thsi reminds me of the ancient story of the domesday...Three winters will come, with no summer in between...war amonsgt the humans will follow. The gods will go to war against the evil forces. The giants, Gardians of the fire and Loke, the maker of earth falling to ruins. A huge batle takes place at "Vigrid" and amongst others, the head of teh gods, Oden dies. In the end "Surte" - a gardien of the fire, throws the fire over the world and burn it down. Out of the ashes the sons and dauhters of the old gods give birth to a new world adn soon...one can no longer say that the world has come to an end.

Thsi pictiure made me think of this new world. The sun tries to peak out through the thick smoke caused by the fire which went cross the old world. The smoke si skattering, giving way to fresh water, blue sky and a new begining...
Phil Douglis29-Oct-2006 18:37
I love this comment, Dandan -- it says exactly what I was thinking as I made this shot. The sun bores a hole in the image to wake the earth and reveal the smoldering scene before us. I've tried to show just enough of it to get the imagination going.
Guest 29-Oct-2006 13:06
Phil, what an incredible image. It seems the sun is waking up the earth… and we are waiting to see what is happening next…
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