From the Park Headquarters in Big Bend, at Panther Junction, drive southwest for approximately 16 miles or so. Look to the North side of the road (your left) and for a gravel/dirt turnoff called Old Ore Road. Approximately 4 ½ miles later the road forks. When you can drive no further, park (there is a primitive campsite). It’s a difficult road and a high clearance vehicle is what you should be driving.
“Tinajas,” (also called “Kettles”) are pools of water formed in the pockets of bedrock. Pictured here is the Ernst Tinaja, a 13-foot, naturally-formed-rock pool. It is composed of orange-colored striations in geology (most distinctive when hit by the setting sun). It is at the entrance of a limestone canyon. Oyster fossils are embedded in the layers of rock at the pool.
This photograph was dramatically over-exposed and then in editing brought back to what was visible at the time when captured. This process reveals details in areas of the canyon that were otherwise cast in the stark contrast of shadows created by the light of the sun.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 11.5 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.