Rotorua Mud Pools

There's a surprising amount of variety in the Whakarewarewa mud pools, depending on how liquid the mud is.

attractive circles in watery mud

Things even change just with the passage of time, with new features forming and old ones going away.

You could spend a lifetime just photographing the same areas over and over, and see new things each time.

dark circles in light-coloured mud

If the mud is just the right consistency then you can get these little mud volcanoes.

a little mud volcano

If mud pools are like belly buttons, then the last one must have been an "outty" and this one is an "inny"!

a tiny bubbling mud pool recessed slightly into the ground

Ah, but I promised to tell you the three very simple steps to getting photographs of mud pool bubbles right at the moment they burst.   Well...

three boiling mud bubbles popping simultaneously

(1)  choose the bubbling mud pool you want to photograph and get your camera ready to photograph it...

two boiling mud bubbles popping simultaneously

(2)  when you think a bubble is about to burst, press the shutter release...

mud hovering in mid air after a bubble pops

(3)  repeat steps two and three 30 or 40 times until you've got a photo that's worth keeping!

Click on this photo to load a page with a full-sized 'wallpaper' version of the photo which you can download to your computer.