Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming

In the north east corner of Wyoming lies Devil’s Tower National Monument. 50 million years ago, molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and cooled underground. As it cooled it contracted and fractured into columns. Millions of years of erosion eventually exposed it. The tower stands 1,267 feet above the river and the diameter of its base is 1,000 feet.

I got up before sunrise and donned my mosquito protection gear and hiking boots and hiked through mud and waist-high grasses to get to the location. I used my Singh-Ray 4 stop neutral density filter to filter out some of the light to capture the flowing motion of the river.

Ordinarily in a situation when the foreground is much darker than the sky, I would also use a 3 stop graduated neutral density filter. However, in this case, the exposure difference between the sky and the foreground was much more than 3 stops. As well, the GND’s do not work so well when the horizon is not level. It would have also darkened the tower itself.

I opted to make a high dynamic range photograph by taking 3 separate exposures and blending them together to create the final image.

I like the wide-angle approach, but it does not give a proper sense of the magnitude of the tower. Tomorrow I will show you a closer view.