You’ve seen the movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind basically cemented that massive, fluted phonolite porphyry monolith into the global psyche back in the late seventies. But honestly, looking at photos of Devils Tower on a screen and actually standing in the dirt at its base in northeastern Wyoming are two completely different vibes. Most people scroll through Instagram and think they’ve seen it all. They haven't.
It's massive. Seriously.
When you start digging into the visual history of this place, you realize that photographers have been obsessed with it since the late 1800s. William Henry Jackson took some of the earliest famous photos of Devils Tower, and even back then, the scale was a nightmare to capture. If you don't have a human or a pine tree for scale, the Tower looks like a stump. A big stump, sure, but a stump nonetheless. In reality, it rises 867 feet from its base to the summit. That is a lot of vertical rock.
The Light Problem (and Why Your iPhone Might Fail)
Ask any pro who spends weeks in the Black Hills: the light here is tricky. Because the Tower is essentially a giant cylinder of vertical columns, it creates these deep, dramatic shadows that shift every single minute. Early morning light hits those hexagonal columns and makes them glow like gold. By noon? It looks flat. Boring. Almost gray.
Most photos of Devils Tower you see online are taken from the "Tower Trail," which is a paved 1.3-mile loop. It’s the easiest way to get a shot, but it’s also the most predictable. If you want the "Discovery" worthy shot, you’ve gotta go further out. Red Beds Trail offers those sweeping vistas where you can actually see the Belle Fourche River winding in the background. That's where the red sedimentary rocks provide a color contrast that makes the gray-green igneous rock of the Tower pop.
You also have to deal with the atmosphere. Wyoming is windy. Like, "knock your tripod over and ruin your $2,000 lens" windy. The dust in the air can create a natural haze. Some photographers hate it. Others, like the legendary Ansel Adams (who photographed the monument in the 1940s), knew how to use that atmospheric depth to create layers. If you look at Adams' work here, he wasn't just taking a picture of a rock; he was capturing the weight of the sky pushing down on it.
Night Photography and the "Alien" Aesthetic
Since the 2017 solar eclipse passed near this region, there’s been a massive explosion in astrophotography involving the Tower. It’s a certified International Dark Sky Park now. That’s a big deal.
When you're looking at night-time photos of Devils Tower, you're usually seeing a composite. One long exposure for the foreground to catch the texture of the stone, and another for the Milky Way. Because the Tower points straight up like a finger toward the heavens, it creates this perfect leading line for the stars. It’s almost too perfect. It feels cinematic because our brains are trained to look for those Spielbergian silhouettes.
But there is a ethical layer here that many casual tourists miss.
It Isn't Just a Rock: The Cultural Weight
For over 20 Indigenous tribes, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Kiowa, this place is Bear Lodge (Mato Tipila). It’s sacred. When you’re taking photos of Devils Tower, you’ll likely see colorful prayer cloths tied to the trees.
Do not photograph the prayer cloths.
This is a point of real tension. The National Park Service specifically asks visitors to be respectful. Taking a "cool" photo of a sacred offering for your travel blog is generally considered a massive jerk move. It’s about nuance. A photographer’s job is to capture the essence of a place, and the essence of Bear Lodge is deeply spiritual. You can feel it when you're there. The air feels heavier. The silence is louder.
There’s also the climbing. Since the first recorded ascent by William Rogers and Willard Ripley in 1893—who used a wooden ladder they built into the cracks—people have been obsessed with scaling the columns. In June, there’s a voluntary climbing ban out of respect for traditional sun dances and ceremonies. If you’re looking for photos of Devils Tower with climbers in them for scale, avoid June. You won't find many, and the ones you do find are usually of people ignoring the local tribes' wishes.
The Science Behind the "Strips"
If you zoom in on high-resolution photos of Devils Tower, you’ll see the columns aren't perfect. They’re cracked. They’re leaning. Some have fallen. These are columnar joints, formed as the magma cooled and contracted. It’s the same physics that makes mud crack in the sun, just on a geological scale.
Geologists like Dr. Arianna Soldati have pointed out that while we know what it is (an igneous intrusion), we still argue about how it got exposed. Did the surrounding sedimentary rock just erode away over millions of years? Probably. But when you look at a photo of those vertical lines, it’s hard not to imagine something more violent, like a giant bear clawing the earth, which is exactly what the Kiowa legends describe. The "science vs. legend" debate is written right there in the stone, and the best photos manage to capture both the geometric precision of the cooling magma and the organic, ancient feeling of the myth.
Gear, Timing, and the "Hidden" Spots
If you’re planning to head out there, don't just stop at the visitor center parking lot. Everyone does that. The "classic" shot is from the road entering the park, where the road curves and the Tower looms in the distance. It's fine. It's a "I was here" photo.
But if you want something real?
- Joyner Ridge Trail: This is the local secret. It’s on the quieter side of the park. You get a side-on view that shows the "bulge" of the base better than the front-facing tourist spots.
- The Prairie Dog Town: About half a mile from the entrance, there’s a massive colony of prairie dogs. If you have a long lens, you can get shots of these little guys with the massive Tower blurred in the background. It’s a great way to show the ecosystem, not just the geology.
- Winter: Most people visit in the summer when it’s 90 degrees and crowded. Winter is brutal. The wind will bite your face off. But a photo of Devils Tower covered in a dusting of snow, with no tourists in sight? That’s the shot. The white snow fills the cracks between the columns, highlighting the verticality in a way summer light never can.
Common Misconceptions in Digital Edits
We see a lot of "fake" looking photos of Devils Tower these days. People crank the saturation until the trees look neon green and the rock looks purple. Don't do that. The real beauty of the Tower is its subtlety. It’s a muted palette of sage green, lichen yellow, and deep basalt gray.
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Also, watch your focal length. Wide-angle lenses (like the 0.5x on your phone) make the Tower look tiny and far away. To really capture the "looming" feeling, you actually want a telephoto lens. Zooming in from a distance compresses the landscape, making the Tower look like it's right on top of the trees. That’s how you get that "mountain out of a molehill" perspective that actually feels accurate to the human eye's experience of awe.
Making the Trip Worth It
It’s easy to think of Devils Tower as a one-off stop on the way to Mount Rushmore. It shouldn't be. Rushmore is cool, but it’s man-made. It’s static. The Tower is alive in a geological sense. It’s shedding rocks. It’s changing color with the weather.
If you're going to take photos of Devils Tower, spend the night in Hulett or Sundance. Get up at 4:00 AM. Be the first person at the gate. When the sun hits those columns for the first time, and there’s nobody else around but the deer and the occasional turkey, you’ll stop caring about your camera settings for a second. You’ll just look at it. And that’s usually when you take your best photo anyway—the one where you finally understand why people have been staring at this thing in total silence for thousands of years.
Practical Steps for Your Visit
Check the weather before you leave Sundance or Moorcroft. The Black Hills create their own microclimates. You can have a blue sky in town and a massive thunderstorm at the Tower.
Pack a circular polarizer for your camera. It’s the only way to cut the glare off the rock faces and actually see the texture of the lichen. Without it, the sun just bounces off the flat surfaces and washes out the detail.
Bring water. The altitude is around 5,000 feet. It’s not Everest, but if you’re coming from the coast, you’ll feel it on the uphill sections of the Red Beds Trail.
Finally, remember that the best photos of Devils Tower are the ones that tell a story about the scale of time. We are tiny. The Tower is old. Capturing that contrast is the real challenge.
Walk the loop. Take the long trail. Look up until your neck hurts. Then, and only then, hit the shutter.