Elephant's Feet - a photo on Flickriver

Elephant's Feet

            I had seen images of this location a few days prior. As I needed to get out of the house I decided to take a trip to Arizona where these “Elephant Feet” reside.
Reside they do right by the road, which is my kind of photography! But 385 miles away is not necessarily my kind of range.
Cloud cover wise, the weather looked promising. Off I went. From looking  through a bunch of selfie images on the web, I knew that whatever elephant left his feet behind in prehistoric times, he was big. During the drive I pondered how to light these things out, as I wasn’t going there for a daytime selfie.
Well, that problem sorted itself out very quickly. I had completely underestimated the traffic on that highway, so came nightfall, it became clear who was going to do the lighting and how: Cars and trucks! From both directions.
Then the clouds moved in, like they do so often when you want to photograph the night sky! I wasn’t too concerned, I knew they were going to dissipate later on.
Then a Semi trailer truck moved in. The parking area is quite big, so I wasn’t too concerned. He maneuvered around a bit but then, to my growing horror, he started to back up and back up and back up until the rear of the trailer was sticking in between the two feet. Nooooo! Was this guy insane???
I ran up to the cab and started to plead with the driver to see if he really needed to park right in between the feet. I told him that I had come all this way  from Santa Fe, NM to take some night photography at this very spot. After some hm-ing and ha-ing he agreed, because he happened to be from Albuquerque and didn’t want to cause distress to a fellow New Mexican. So he pulled his truck out of there only to park over by my car at the other end of the parking area.
After a while he proceed to work on his “reefer” unit for which he needed a work light, which of course bathed the feet in an ugly white light. His work consisted of trying to start a really loud generator for about two hours or more. 
After he was finally done I proceeded with my camera work. I have a bed platform in my SUV so I finally went to sleep to the sound of a generator.
This place is completely unprotected, which is evident in the shreds of white toilet paper stuck to the brush like flags, the graffiti on the feet, the broken beer bottles and the general “trampledness” of the place. 
Oh, not to forget drivers sticking their rears between an elephant’s feet!
Despite all that it’s a cool place.


   

Taken on: July 17, 2023

Tags:

Arizona

landscape

nature

outside

outdoors

night photography

Milky Way

astro photography

Elephant

Sony A6400

Rokinon 12mm f2 « less

Sets appears in: • Night Sky

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Camera: Sony ILCE-6400, f/2.5, 3.2 sec, 12mm, ISO 6400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-6400
Lens:	Rokinon 12mm f2
Aperture:	f/2.5
Exposure Time:	3.2
Focal Length:	12mm
ISO:	6400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Spot
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 12.4 (Macintosh)
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