Thanksgiving, South Roxana

Thanksgiving morning, South Roxana, Illinois
Photograph by Tom Atwood

The area around the ConocoPhillips-Wood River Refinery is one of my favorite places, rich with exotic photographic landscapes, towers spewing clouds of steam into the air, enormous flames leaping into the sky, the refinery--lit up like a Christmas tree year round. And during the holidays, a giant crane hoists actual Christmas lights high above Highway 111. When my son Riley was very young, after we first moved here, he gazed out the car windows as we drove past this industrial paradise and declared, "Dad, we are lucky to live so close to this!" I can't disagree. Shutter: 1/125; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 800; Focal length: 18 mm.