Photos

The Elephant Rocks, that is...

This one will give you a little more detail than the first one I showed the other day, at least as far as the granite and all the lichens that form on them. You can see here two of the ways new Elephants are created - as the web page says: older elephants erode slowly, but new ones are created at the same time. The lichens slowly pit the rock and the rain hammers away at these pits and makes pools, called "solution pans" or "tinajitas." Temporary pools of water that collect in these depressions often provide a home for tadpoles and mosquito larvae, too. You don't want to stand too close to one at dusk or dawn in the middle of the summer, at least not without a generous dose of Missouri cologne, or "Off!", which is it's commercial name...

This photograph was actually taken prior to that first one, the sun is barely at the horizon at this point, the pink of the granite is echoed by the pink edges of the morning clouds. The first few rays of warm sunlight are bouncing off the atmosphere to bring light on the most popular grouping of elephant rocks in the park.

I shot this one to be an HDR, bracketed 5 shots, but found I really liked just this one exposure, so I thought I would show just it to you all.