A Swirl of Color

I shot this picture at Yellowstone National Park's Fountain Paint Pot, a mud pot in the Lower Geyser Basin. A mud pot is a kind of acidic hot spring with limited water. These mud pots are pools of bubbling mud. The acid and microorganisms decompose the surrounding rock into clay and mud. The mud in the area is red, yellow and brown in various places. The colors are created by the various stages of oxidation of iron in the mud. 

I like this image because of the placement of part of a dead tree in the mud, and the swirl of yellow behind it. When I visited this area last week, the yellow swirl was no longer there, evidence of the ever-changing nature of the area's geology.