Animas Forks, CO
As luck would have it, the stars aligned for my trip to Animas Forks; literally.
I posted an outing notice, seen here, on August 4th for a weekend trip from Aug 10 - Aug 12 to Animas Forks. It was to be a weekend of camping, light-painting, a new moon and the annual Perseid meteor shower! What could be better when it comes to night photography!?
A word of caution: Do make sure you have a decent headlamp with you if you decided to crawl around in the buildings after dark. I would not recommend a flashlight, at all, as you will need your hands free.
Frisco-Bagley Mill
The weekend started out with some light-painting of the old Frisco-Bagley Mill. I just recently acquired a LED light set and couldn't wait to try it out. The mill was going to provide a perfect subject to try the lights out on!
The old mill was stunning! Such character! According to the Colorado Historical Society, and pulled straight from the Colorado State Register Of Historic Properties Nomination Form,
"The Frisco Mill was a massive post and beam construction with timber joints through bolted and dapped. The 150-ton ore concentration mill was assembled during the summer of 1912 at an elevation of 11,400 feet. All the framing timbers still carry an identifying letter and number location code. Construction crews assembled the framing of the pre-cut and pre-fit pieces in proper order and sequence based on the location code. None of these pieces had need of cutting on site; the process was similar to a very large jigsaw puzzle.
The Silverton Standard reported in April 1912 that framing timbers were being cut and fit at the San Juan Lumber yard [location unknown today]. The newspaper noted in June that the timbers were ready to ship. The paper reported in August that the roof was being installed with most mill equipment present at the site.
The August 1912 Silverton Standard noted that the building was constructed around the machinery it housed. (This is evidenced by large holes cut in portions of the walls in order to extricate the equipment later.) Massive poured concrete foundations for the particular pieces of equipment are evident as well as concrete pedestals, footings and footing walls of the building itself.
This building is distinct in its design for an ore concentrating mill. In the process of reduction the mineral portions of the ore are separated from the sand, clay and rock in order to ship just mineral to the smelter. There are several steps to this process and each step has machinery peculiar to its own stage of separation. Gravity was used to move the ore during processing. Most all mills stair step down a mountainside in order to create vertical separation so the ore may flow down hill. These steps are usually 15 to 30 feet between one floor and the next."
Lone Shack At Sunset Prints Available
During the day, we drove into town (Silverton), charged our batteries and had lunch. We ate at the Coffee Bear, where we were greeted with gracious hospitality and wonderful food. I definitely recommend the place! Once back at camp, it was prime time to roam around and take pictures of the countryside. Above, in the image entitled Lone Shack At Sunset, is the result of my wanderings.
Once the day was over, it was time to head back into Animas Forks and do some more light painting. This night's subject was the main cabin you see when entering town. This cabin, a gently restored cabin, sits up a bit and proved to be a perfect subject. As a matter of fact, just looking at the completed image, you'd not really know it was in a ghost town unless you either recognized it or recognized the architecture.
Restored Building In Blue Hour
Yes, this building has been restored, but rest assured, it hasn't been lit in dang near a century! We lit the building one room at a time with Lume Cubes. I later combined the images in post in Adobe Lightroom CC.
As bad luck would have it, while moving my camera to a new location, I caught a pretty nice meteor coming in. I say bad luck because I was not prepared to catch anything, nevertheless a meteor. Confused? I'll explain...
Worst Luck Ever
In the dark, I will often turn my ISO way up on my Nikon D5600 I turn my ISO up so I can take a "test shot" just to check and see if my composition is how I want it. By now, I am sure you can see where this is going. Yup, I caught this otherwise nice image with an ISO of 25600 and an exposure of 20 seconds. Cringe. It was all I could do just to recover it as well as I did. So, if you were wondering why I have a terrible Milky Way image with a meteor running through it, well, now you know. ;-)
Thank you to Daniel Oldenburg (FB) (IG) from Old Birds Photography and Mark Ronay (FB) (IG) for an awesome weekend!
Keep on the lookout, both here and on my Facebook Events Page, for future outdoor/backpacking/camping/photog fun!
