
Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge Butte) is a butte, possibly laccolithic, composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of the Black Hills, near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River. It rises 1,267 feet (386 m) above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 feet (265 m) from summit to base. The summit is 5,112 feet (1,559 m) above sea level.
Devils Tower was the first United States national monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt.
According to the Native American tribes of the Kiowa and Lakota, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades.
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. - Ansel Adams
It had been mostly overcast most of the evening. My wife and I had gone to this location in hopes that at sunset there might be some light sneak under the cloud cover. I had my rig sat up waiting. It was almost as God was saying, "Wait..., wait..., wait..., now watch this." This light only lasted about 4 minutes at the most.
This photo was featured in the Aug. 2021 issue of Landscape Photography Magazine in their Assignment - Last Light section.
Date & Time | June 26, 2021: 8:25pm |
Location | Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming |
Coordinates | 44.599333, -104.722281 |
Focal Length | 300mm |
Aperture | f/11 |
Shutter Speed | 1/15 |
ISO | 100 |
Number of Exposures | 70 |
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Total Pixels | 390,366,989 |
Horizontal Pixels | 26,353 |
Vertical Pixels | 14,813 |
Aspect Ratio | 1.78 : 1 |
File Size | 2,231 MB |
Width @ 300ppi (perfect) | 7.32 feet |
Height @ 300ppi | 4.11 feet |
Width @ 150ppi (near-perfect) | 14.64 feet |
Height @ 150ppi | 8.23 feet |
Date & Time | June 26, 2021: 8:25pm |
Location | Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming |
Coordinates | 44.599333, -104.722281 |
Focal Length | 300mm |
Aperture | f/11 |
Shutter Speed | 1/15 |
ISO | 100 |
Number of Exposures | 70 |
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