Custer State Park, South Dakota.

The largest of the four lakes in Custer State Park is Stockade Lake. The park is about a 40-minute drive from Mount Rushmore in the South Dakota Black Hills.  This artificial lake was created by the Stockade Lake Dam, construction completed on April 1, 1934. The dam created a haven for camping, fishing, hiking, and other outdoor recreation.

Named for the Gordon Stockade, a hastily built fort during the 1874 Black Hills gold rush, the lake is on French Creek. In a future post, I’ll feature a few more images of the lake and creek.

About the photo: On the southwest end of the lake, the road crosses a wooden bridge over French Creek. There is a small parking area with views of the lake, dam, and bridge. I launched the Mavic Air drone and captured some images. This image is a panorama of two images that allowed me to show more of the lake. The stitching of images and basic tweaking were done in Adobe Lightroom, with final touches completed in Luminar 4.

The two images are in RAW (DNG) format, and after processing the final image was converted to JPG for sharing here. I have mentioned before that I could let the drone create a panoramic image automatically. I don’t do that because that image is a JPG file, and I would have less control over final editing. As always, a better view of the image can be had by selecting it (if your browser supports that function.)

John Steiner