Location Taken: Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park
Time Taken: October 2012
The more I look at this photo, the more it looks like a giant valley whose floor is completely covered with volcanic… matter. Maybe lava, maybe something else, whatever it is is steaming…
Which it is, sort of.
Except it’s not filling the entire valley. It’s a trick of perspective. This is a terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs, a large flat area made entirely of hydrothermic travertine (aka that there white rock) that’s elevated above the actually-rather-large valley that extends far beyond.
It’s just such an unusual feature, with few aspects that provide a sense of scale, that our brain, in trying to parse it all out, makes a few errors here and there. Perfectly understandable errors, really. In the real world, our 3D vision gives us enough sense of scale to make this out properly, but that’s not exactly usable for a photo. Add in some perfectly-placed hills in the background, and well, you get your everyday apocalyptic plains.
