This week, Terri at Second Wind Leisure Perspectives is challenging everyone with the color of Lava or a mix of orange, dark brown, and black. What an unusual mix of colors…

These photos of Yellowstone certainly came to mind. After all, Yellowstone is an active volcano. The photo on the left was from my trip in 2017 and the right was from 2021. I believe both were taken near Grand Prismatic Springs – a popular tourist attraction that was always crowded when I went there. I like the picture from 2021 better than the 2017 photo, mainly because of the fog in the background.

One more photo came to mind and it’s this one, which was taken on my recent trip to Niagara Falls. This was the only long exposure photo I manage to take there since I didn’t have my tripod. I had to leave that at home as I was only allowed a backpack on the plane. I didn’t weigh my backpack prior to getting on the flight but I’d imagine it weighed around 15 pounds or so.

I’m 4-foot-8-inches (1.42 m) tall, imagine a tiny girl wearing a turtle shell of a backpack.

The backpack was very heavy with my laptop, 7 days of clothes, a camera and a lens, and other essential stuff (charging cables, power bank, etc.). In fact, even after coming home for a week, my shoulders and back still hurt from carrying my backpack as we had to move to a different hotel nearly every night of the trip.

Anyway, I was fortunate to find this observation deck with concrete retaining walls as wide as a table, which allowed me to place my camera on it to get my shots. This was on the Canadian side, by the way, right before sunrise and I think at 1/5 seconds, the camera captured the orange glow of the sky beautifully. With the brown from the rocks and blacks from the tree’s shadows, I think this photo has got the lava color palette – black, brown, and orange.