Grand Prismatic Spring with Tourists, Yellowstone, WY

This photograph by artist David Maisel shows a modern bird’s eye view of a world-renowned tourist site, Yellowstone National Park. Maisel is well known for his aerial photography of environmentally impacted sites and specifically of nature’s interaction with human disturbance. In this photo we see the largest hot spring in America and third largest in the world, the Grand Prismatic Spring of Yellowstone. The spring takes up the majority of the frame, but human presence can be spotted at the top right of the spring. There is a small wooden walkway snaking up the right portion of the frame and there are small tourists walking along the path, admiring the spring.
Now one of the most toured parts of any national park land was once hated and considered a living hell by early explorers. When the park was first opened, spectators were taken aback by how blue the water was. As time went on and trash clogged parts of the vent, the temperature lowered and some of the microbes died, causing the spring to lose some of its blue color. In the center of the spring, that has temperatures rising up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, there is a deep blue that slowly turns into a green and finally into a mustard yellow color as the spring expands outwards. As steam rises off the top of the water, the viewer sees the rings of microbes that have become accustomed to living in different parts of the near boiling water. The steam that rises off the top of the acidic water seems to float in midair, never rising or falling back down into the spring.