No, not Paris Hilton.
UPDATE: More photos here.
Today I went to Sandy, Utah to check out the gun show. Sold off a little-used rifle, but managed to not buy anything (fairly easy to do, actually, since the few ammo dealers were getting mobbed, and the vast bulk of the Interesting Weapons were gone… most dealers had Blah Guns) . Afterwards I decided to go somewhere I hadn’t been before… the Bingham Canyon Mine, the largest man-made excavation in the world.
This was one of those “why haven’t I been here before” visits. It was a lot easier to get to than I’d thought. It was also VASTLY larger than I’d thought. Trust me, photos do NOT put across the immensity of this project. It’s a manmade Grand Canyon.
I took a whole bunch of photos, most of which I need to process yet into proper panoramas. But this image, made from four photos, might help get across the immensity of the place. As a handy scale reference… note the little yellow thing down at the bottom near some of the truly ginormous dump trucks.
See it?
Haha, school bus.
This is one of those places that leads to a feeling that This Is What Men Can Do. Rather than being the plaything of nature, Man made nature his bitch, and created a true wonder. Only once before have I been given this feeling up close and personal… in 2005 on a business trip for ATK, I got a guided tour of the VAB at Kennedy Space Center. My timing was fortuitous on that day… the Shuttle Discovery was fully stacked within the VAB, and I got to ride the elevator up to the 16th level and look right in the windows… and look straight down the boosters and the tank. THAT will inspire religious feelings, I guaran-damn-tee. And much to my eternal infinite godsdamned annoyance, they wouldn’t let me take a camera with me.
5 Responses to “The Biggest Hole In The World”
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That’s pretty much the conclusion I came to as well (at the gun show). I went down there with a buddy of mine, got their at 9:00 and the ammo was already getting mobbed. Didn’t see anything there that even tempted me although the .50 cal sniper rifles were interesting. 🙂 The prices there were actually HIGHER than what you can get online or at the dealer (at Impact Guns anyway).
Spotted another good panorama spot if you happen to be in the area. There’s a shooting range on the side of the mountain in Layton from which you can see pretty much unbroken from Magna all the way to at least Willard Bay.
As for the religious experience I imagine stand at the side of the main Newport News (yeah, I know it’s NG) drydock as a piece of aircraft carrier flies over might do something similar 🙂
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The shot that you have that’s taller than wide and shows the carved horizontal levels is how I would sell that, maybe with the schollbus to show scale, but the mountain tops kinda do that already.
But… if you really stare at it, shapes appear in the picture.
Or you could take it into photoshop, get a picture of Jesus or Mary, run them thru a couple effects, then add it too the picture where it would best fit in, but not in a way that you instantly see it, and you could have one popular picture.
>Or you could take it into photoshop, get a picture of Jesus or Mary…
A few years ago I had the idea to create a toaster that would burn the face of Jesus or Mary into a slice of toast. Or a similar device to do that to a tortilla. Then I found that someone already was marketting such a thing.
[…] few days ago I got back to the Bingham Canyon mine. This time, the lighting conditions were pretty good. With improved computers, I can stitch […]