Happy Holidays from Old Faithful!  Here's some images taken today in the Upper Geyser Basin at Old Faithful.  This first image is of a mid-morning eruption of Old Faithful Geyser.  Perhaps the first thing to notice in this image is the lack of any serious snowpack.  The official NPS measurement of snowpack at Old Faithful is just over 7 inches (just under 18 centimeters).  Yep, that's it.  I woke up this morning to a low temperature of minus 8 degrees farenheit (minus 22 celcius) and it was clear, so I headed off into the geyser basin.  It dropped as low as minus 12 F (minus 24 C) while I was out but the cold temps and nice fog made for some great images.  I missed the first Old Faithful eruption, so finished my morning with the eruption seen above.  The runoff channels made nice leading lines and I was able to put my new 17-40 L lens to the test.

This image is of Castle Geyser, another one of my favorite photo subjects in the Upper Geyser Basin.  The shapes and textures in the snow made a great foreground for this image, which was shot shortly after the sun rose above a low ridge of clouds to the east.  It was also shot with the new lens, which performed really well.

This final image from this morning is of Sawmill Geyser.  Sawmill is frequently in eruption and can be quite photogenic.  The 17-40 did a good job shooting into the sun.  While there was some lens flare, it wasn't bad, and the resulting sunstar was pretty nice.  Cold temps are forecasted for tonight, so I'll head out again in the morning to see what I can find.  But with little snow in the forecast for the next week, things could get a bit dire.  We definitely need some snow here.