Hoover Dam is big.

You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam is, like a giant rock, hard to photograph.  Ansel Adams photographed it from downstream, where mere mortals like myself would not be allowed today. 

So I had to work with what I could get from the dam and parking lots around it.  So I got a few shots I am happy with walking across the dam and back.

As I walked, I watched couples and families drive the dam with their windows down, taking pictures, or trying, in the 30 seconds that it takes to cross the dam.  From the dam in a car all you can really see is the canyon walls and the power lines.

When I am photographing something, I like to know it first or, to invoke Heinlein, to grok it.  This doesn't always work out; it is impossible to grok Death Valley in 4 days, but knowing something about the geography, geology, and ecology helps.  This is why photography projects take a long time for me.  I'm looking, or trying to look, at the truth of each facet of the thing.

It isn't possible to grok, or even to know Hoover Dam without walking it, seeing the inside of the dam, feeling the vibration of the turbines, or looking down the long face of the dam and imagining falling the 1244ft. to the bottom.  Can you really claim to have been to Hoover Dam if you've just ridden over it in a car and shot a picture of the canyon?  You certainly haven't experienced the dam, one of the most remarkable works of man in the last 100 years, and possibly of all time.