Scott's Photo Friday - Keystone Dam Oklahoma

Most of my photos come on our travels, but we can't travel every weekend. For various reasons we have been staying closer to home recently. When we can't travel I try to find good subjects for photography in my local area.

Keystone Lake is just a few miles upstream from Tulsa on the Arkansas river. With Oklahoma subject to periodic droughts, the Keystone Dam is often not very impressive, with just enough water flowing to generate power, but Oklahoma has been pretty wet this year, and there have been very heavy rains upstream, so they are running a lot of water through the dam right now.

We got up early to try and get a photo of the Moon setting over the dam, I had the location planned correctly, but I messed up on the timing. The Moon was setting just as we drove up, and I could not get the camera set up in time to get the shot. Still we had some interesting light, and there was a strong mist from the dam that developed into a heavy fog. We stayed for a few hours and I took pictures in the changing light. Ren is very understanding, and patient with my early morning photo jaunts.

The area below the dam was filled with birds, thousands of them. The Pelicans were passing through on their annual migration. As the sun was rising they began to feed.

As we were leaving we found that most of the flock were on the lake side of the dam. It was hard to tell in the fog but the lake was covered in Pelicans for as far as we could see. This photo only captures a tiny portion of them.

While I did not get the photo I was after, I am still pleased with the photos that I did get.