I am straying from my usual format for my daily photography blog portion of this website for this post. I usually only have one image on those posts, but I had four images I liked showing the petroglyphs at Atlatl Rock in Valley of Fire State Park. I did not want to do four separate blog entries, but I am also not ready to create a location spotlight on Valley of Fire yet, so I am including all four images in this post to avoid overly-similar entries.
All images taken in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada on April 16, 2016
26.6 mm: ISO 200: f/4.2: 1/500 sec.
If you are into petroglyphs, Valley of Fire is a must. There are two separate areas of the state park that have petroglyphs. The Valley of Fire State Park is located about 45 minutes North of Las Vegas and has a ton of interesting sites packed into a relatively small geographical area near the northern edge of Lake Mead. Soon after entering the park, there is a small gravel loop you can exit the main road to drive. It is a must as there are some great sites along the way including Windstone Arch (you will need help finding it), Arch Rock and Atlatl Rock. Atlatl Rock is where the petroglyphs are at so if that is all you care about, you can enter the loop from the east end it is only a short drive.
41.3 mm: ISO 200: f/4.5: 1/250 sec.
Atlatl Rock is named for its depictions of atlatls in many of the images. The atlatl depictions also help date the petroglyphs at more than 1500 years old from what I can tell. It also appears from the images the Valley of Fire area was one of cultures coming together as there are depictions that would have come from the hunting peoples of the Great Basin and the farming people of the Pueblo people from the south.
70.2 mm: ISO 200: f/5.3: 1/250 sec.
This is a close up showing three deer-like animals that I was most drawn to of all the images.
66.2 mm: ISO 200: f/5.3: 1/40 sec.
I decided to process one image in black and white to see the image without the red rock. I found it quite interesting how it now looks like a normal gray rock you would find in more northern regions, but for some reason, it seems to lose its authenticity to me. Perhaps, this is because I have never seen any petroglyphs apart from the Southwest United States, which is primarily comprised of the red rock.
Gear Used:
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