Spring and Lake at Mammoth Spring

Mammoth Spring

A look at the water of the spring from which Mammoth Spring State Park in Arkansas gets its name, as seen during our visit in August. As you may remember, we stopped by Mammoth Spring on our way to and from dropping Jaylin off at college.

The actual Mammoth Spring is somewhere out in the middle of that body of water. However, you can not actually see it because it is about 70 feet below the surface of the water. Yes, that area is not all that large, but it drops down rather deep pretty quickly.

The spring is called “Mammoth” because of its size, as 9 million gallons of water flow from it each hour. Yes, each hour! That’s a lot of water, my friends!

Flowing Water

All of those 9 million gallons of water each hour have to go somewhere to make room for more water coming behind it. So the water flows from that spring pool down into a lake, as you can see here.

And yes, the colors here really are accurate. The water is actually clear, so what you are seeing is the green bed of the pool area. And as I mentioned in the previous post, the water is quite cool, at a constant 58 degrees as it comes out of the ground. Whenever we were close to the water on this hot summer day, we could feel the cool breeze coming off of it.

On to the Lake

The water flows along from the spring pool into the lake, named Spring Lake, which you can see here. A trail takes you all the way around the lake, and we walked the whole trail on each of our stops there to give us a chance to stretch our legs.

If you look closely, the Hydroelectric Plant from the previous post is right there in the center of this photo. The water flows from the spring, into this lake, and over the dam across the way there into the Spring River and down through the state of Arkansas from there. Pretty interesting to be able to follow it along like that.

Laura at the Lake

While we were walking around the lake, I took a couple of photos of Laura. Yes, this is the same colorful place as in the photos above. I just decided to give the photo a different look. I like the way Laura stands out from the background here.

Here is another version:

Same concept, slightly different look. And of course, a different camera orientation, too. Interested in what I did? Read more about it in the “About the Photos” section down below.

And check back later for more from Mammoth Spring State Park!

Bible Verse

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” - Jeremiah 17:7-8

About the Photos

For the first, colorful photos, I used the same preset that I had developed for the earlier Mammoth Spring Dam photos. It worked well for these, too. I loved the way the colors turned out.

For the photos of Laura, I was trying a new preset idea. I wanted to mainly focus on the reds and blues and have the rest of the colors desaturated. I went to the Hue/Saturation/Luminance sliders and increased the saturation for reds and blues, and decreased the saturation for the remaining colors. I also adjusted the luminance for the desaturated colors, making them appear darker as well as desaturated.

That preset will not work well on every photo. For example, it depends on what colors the subject is wearing. We happen to usually wear a lot of reds and blues, so it would often work well for us. However, if there is a lot of blue in the sky, the preset will not work if you don’t want that to show. I did like the little hints of blue in the sky in these photos, but they look that way because the sky was already rather light, to begin with. Just another reminder that one preset will not work “out of the box” for every photo. Adjustments are often necessary.

Photo: Each photo is a single Raw exposure, processed in Luminar AI. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Sony FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Lens
Date: August 7, 2021
Location: Mammoth Spring State Park Park, Arkansas