Yellowstone Lake Sunrise, Yellowstone National Park, August 2006

Camping in Yellowstone in an unique experience. The best facilities at Yellowstone are at the Grant Campgrounds where you have showers to laundromats.

Most people who stay at Grant miss the fact that they are camping just a few yards away from the Yellowstone Lake.

I did go to capture some shots near our tent on the previous days but I was late for the sunrise on some days and on the others there was nothing interesting happening. I have always seen that my best captures are always on the last day of a trip. It happened here too and on the last day of stay, I walked to the lake and it was just the perfect day. The previous night was cold and there was fog and some clouds on the horizon and that was a perfect setup to capture sunrise.

The above photograph was one of the first taken as I strolled on the lakeshore and was trying to do some test shots before the sunrise. Suddenly I saw a row of ducks sailing across in a straight line and I said wow. I realized I had to capture this and switched on my camera but it did not start. Temperatures at Yellowstone can get close to freezing at night during the fall season. The previous night was very cold and my battery had completely drained out. Fortunately my habit of carrying 2 spare batteries all the time helped and it took a minute to get the batteries in place and take the shot.

The chill weather at nights contributed to the fog on the lake and it looked gorgeous. When I came back and started looking at the pictures I realized that the capture was not as interesting as what I saw in real and I began contemplating how to convey my “wow” emotion. I tried black and white but that was underwhelming too. I gave up on this capture and it will take five years for me to come back to this again.

I was reading Luminous Landscape and there Michael Reichmann, the website owner and amazing photographer was talking about his approach to split toning. I got my “Eureka” moment and went to this image and tried it out. It came out amazing and here it is for you.