From the boardwalk you only ever catch the edge of it. You have to get above Grand Prismatic to understand it. The largest hot spring in the country, close to 300 feet across, and the color is alive: rings of heat-loving bacteria laid down in bands, from the scalding blue center out to the burnt orange rim.I shot this straight down from a helicopter on a cold morning, in the few minutes the steam finally lifted. The snow and bare ground pull back from the heat, the runoff channels spread out from the pool like roots, and a thin line of boardwalk on the right gives you the scale. A minute later the steam rolled back over it and buried the whole thing white again.The most surreal piece of ground in America, from the one angle that does it justice. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to put Yellowstone's strangest color on your wall every day.
