This is one of the famous so-called Blood Pools in Beppu, an Onsen resort town in Kyushu, Japan.
This one is located within the Bozu Jingoku thermal area that - if you're in Beppu - I highly recommend visiting.
In processing this shot, I had to find a balance between bringing out the colour of the pool, without oversaturating everything. The main challenge is achieving a depth to the quality of the steam in the image without creating a ton of image noise. Luckily Luminar is great at this, especially since you can brush it only over the areas that really need it.
This pool is just one of many in this area, and on top of that, there are different facilities that have their own pools and style of displaying them. What I liked the most, though, was that you could just fill your water bottles with the spring water! (No, it wasn't rusty red like this image!) It tasted wonderful, good to drink but I wouldn't use it to make tea - I suspect there was a lot of minerals in it.
Another fun thing to do is soak your feet.
There is an area set up for this, and I really enjoyed embarrassing my wife with my hairy, pale toes. Really, no one cared and there weren't many people there, but I do love making her squirm! My son and I wanted to stay there longer, but there were other things to see, like gigantic crocodiles and pools of boiling mud.
Check out the gallery below to see pictures of those!
More photos from Beppu, Japan
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