How to Freeze Your Dragon
Icy Breath Of the Frost Dragon, Cave and Basin
Welcome to 2011! As a nice start to the new year, I’m pleased that my new photograph “Icy Breath Of the Frost Dragon” was selected as the January, 2011 cover image at NatureScapes.Net. This is a good excuse to make this my first featured print of the year. 🙂
I captured the frost dragon just before Christmas at the Cave and Basin location at Banff, Alberta. I was visiting there for a quick bit of photography with Edmontonian and fellow NSN member, Paul Skoczylas. We went because of the natural hot springs, one of the historical attractions of this area of the Canadian West in the early days of the westward expansion of the railroad.
The hot springs flow all year round. In the winter — especially at -20 C as it was on this day — warm water vapor rises from the flow and coats the trees and everything else nearby with fantastic & intricately detailed frost. It’s a fascinating sight, but photographically the challenge is to isolate something with any kind of visual “hook” to make a composition out of the chaotic detail. Here, a pair of converging / diverging heavy tree branches looked to me like the outline of a dragon’s head, complete with a blast of frosty breath from its nostrils. In a winter wonderland, there is a lot for the imagination to play with!
quite an appealing photo. “Tinting” in blue would be an interesting touch, methinks. Or not.
Funny you should mention that. It actually is tinted blue to a slight extent in the darker tones, but it’s quite subtle compared to the one next to it on my Flickr page — “Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas”. Quite a few folks who have viewed “Christmas” felt they preferred a more straight B&W version. Go figure… 🙂
I love this image, it says so much about the winters in your neck of the woods. It’s expressive AND visually appealing, the measure of a great comp. Makes me want to come back to Alberta…