-- Jim Harrison (hphoto@earthlink.net), December 22, 1998

Answers

i think it's more effective if you crop about 1 inch off the bottom to where the steam starts to get heavier

-- richard mittleman (gon2foto@gte.net), December 23, 1998.

Thanks for the suggestion Richard. Of all the versions of this shot I took, this one has the least amount of visible steam. It is hard to tell that it is steam in the other shots. Cropping this shot as you suggested works, but I'm not sure it makes it more effective. If you care to elaborate, I'm interested...thanks again.

Jim

-- (hphoto@earthlink.net), December 23, 1998.

It doesn't work because you can't tell what is sticking out of the water. It looks like a piece of wood on a rock. Now you may know it was a Bison skull, but the viewer doesn't (and telling him/her in the title doesn't count!).

If it were more obviously a skull it might work much better, although the water background doesn't really give it much context (again, you may know it's a thermal pool in Yellowstone, but you couldn't tell from the shot).

It's probably one of those shots where you "had to be there" to appreciate it. You were, but the viewer unfortunately wasn't. It might work better as part of a "natural history" sequence then as a stand alone image.

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), December 23, 1998.

Jim,

I wonder if this might be helped if it were taken from a lower angle. Take across the water with a telephoto to compress the distance and show some background to relate it to? I don't know, I find the space in the upper part of the photo, because it is made up of steam, to be just uninteresting blank space.

I can tell it is a skull of some type with no trouble. It would be interesting to see the other photos you took of this subject and see how it related to the water and steam. It would seem that the steam should be interesting in this image somehow.

interesting Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 27, 1998.

Bob, Point taken on showing an image that can stand alone. I'll keep that in mind when I post again.

Ben, I've looked through my images of this scene again, but I didn't keep any taken from a lower perspective. I agree that a longer lens would have helped. The steam is what really attracted me to this scene. It was also my main problem. It billowed so thick that I couldn't see the skull most of the time. I waited and waited for the wind to shift (I was on a boardwalk and had limited space to work in), but it never did. After an hour or so, I had to move on and didn't get to return.

Incidentally, its been about 50/50 for people identifying that this is a skull in some kind of fog. No one knows it is a thermal pool until I tell them. Wonder how I could have shown that??? Hmmm, looks like I'll have to go back! Thank you all for your input.

-- Jim (hphoto@earthlink.com), December 27, 1998.