A Lively Ghost Town

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Randsburg, a small town on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, hangs on the side of a mountain and is sometimes described as a living ghost town. Like Jerome, Arizona, it retains most of its old west, mining town character while holding on to life. There are shops open on weekends and the General Store, along with a bar called The Joint, stay open on weekdays.

Randsburg is one of a trio of towns that were part of the mining district in the Rand Mountains of Kern County. Gold was first discovered in the area in 1896 and, just as the gold was becoming more scarce, miners discovered silver and tungsten. The mining continues to this day with several mines still producing.

A small amount of tourism contributes to the economy of Randsburg. (I have yet to visit on a weekend when the antique stores and the museum are open.) Many residents still prospect; others work in mining operations nearby. The Rand Mining Company, as well as the Twenty Mule Team Borax Mine in Boron, employ their share of Randsburg residents, while some folks commute to the nearby salt flats, for example.

There is enough to see in town to motivate several trips. However, it is not looking good for my return until after summer is done. June is another surgery month for me, then by July and August no one in their right mind will want to be that close to the Mojave Desert. At least not in my humble opinion.

Don't Stand Near The Shaft

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The photo is another from Randsburg. As you can tell from the sign on the left, this is an open mine shaft. And, it is right smack dab in the middle of town. There really was silver in them thar hills.

Friday was a good news day. The Husband left the house to "just go check a horse's feet" and assured me that he would be home in less than half an hour. An hour and a half later, I called him to see if he was all right and to rib him about that half-hour thing. With a strange note in his voice, he informed me that he had ended up trimming the horse's feet. I was shocked and he seemed a rather surprised himself. The best part is that he said he felt great. No, the best part is that the next day, he still felt great. 

Mining Caliente Creek Road

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I am a sucker for old structures—houses, barns, sheds, most anything. Imagine how happy I was to see a cluster of old buildings along the narrow road following Caliente Creek. I was drawn to the textures and colors in the building materials. When I revisited this folder yesterday, I became more convinced that I have to return and shoot there when I am once again more mobile. I hope to somehow learn more about the background on these buildings.

I’m not certain that the area would be my ideal SoBoMoMo project, since part of what appealed to me is the allure of the amazing colors there and those are not apt to last through May. Those greens won't survive the warmer temperatures when it becomes more clear where the caliente part of the name comes from. Still, I want to explore further and try to determine whether I would be as fascinated without the intense colors of the spring vegetation.

My clean-up-the-computer project (clearing out files and moving folders off the C drive has taken up most of the time that wasn’t devoted to getting ready for the art show tomorrow. I plan to begin late next week refreshing my memory on how to cope with my creaky old Pagemaker 7 and produce a couple of PDF’s so that part of the SoFoBoMo challenge is less onerous. Once again, I have a rough idea of the layout. But, I remember that last year I also had an image in my mind of how my book would look and, as the project evolved, it took on a form that I hadn’t anticipated. We’ll see what happens this time around.

Shutter Speed at 65 MPH

Recently, Bob Wong asked if I would share a few thoughts about what I have dubbed drive-by photography. Unfortunately, Bob, I’m not your go-to person for technique. But, I’m willing to share further thoughts about my quirky habit.

The first time I started shooting through the windshield, then sticking my head and camera outside the window of the vehicle in which we were traveling, The Husband was incredulous. “What are you doing?”, he asked (the tone of voice said it all). I told him that I was preparing to enter the aerial photography field. He just chuckled and shook his head. In case you have the same reaction, I do have some reasons for this behavior: a. I love taking pictures; b. it helps me practice basic skills without interference from that nasty inner critic; and c. It is a better way to spend travel time than playing the license plate game.

Not surprisingly, most of the shots I take from the car end up in cyberspace. The point of shooting from a moving vehicle was never about making the best possible landscape pictures. (I have my eccentricities, but I’m not that far out there.) I use the time to acquire a better command of camera controls and train my eye to more quickly recognize pleasing compositions.

Partly as a result of starting to squander all those pixels a couple of years ago, I acquired the confidence to shoot in Manual mode. To most people that may not sound like much of an accomplishment; however, in the beginning, I was totally intimidated by that much responsibility for setting exposure. As a relative newcomer to photography, I have too-fresh memories of shooting exclusively in the Auto mode. Later, I continued to use the drive-by sessions for the exploration of other camera functions, including Canon’s focus tracking mode, (AI Servo) and the A-DEP mode.

Those sessions worked for me, because they freed me to step outside my comfort zones. For instance, I couldn’t take a lot of time to think about a shot. The moments were flying by and the circumstances forced me to quickly commit to choices. From the beginning, I had the sense to pursue these exercises with minimal expectations of keepers and all that experimenting, then deleting, toughened me a bit to see shots that didn’t work as just part of the learning process, rather than failures. Early on, I learned that the more I invested in a shot, the more the disappointments hurt. Sometimes the pain would be enough to temporarily shut me down. In other words, after viewing my results, I would put the camera down for a while and fritter away valuable time while my wounds healed. By shooting wild and loose, on the fly, I tricked myself into exploration rather than chasing success.

When I was shooting through the windshield or hanging partly outside the window, it didn’t matter so much if I stank at framing. It was okay to blow it on the exposure. It was no big surprise if I set the shutter speed too slow and the shot was a mess of a blur. I could experiment and toss the results with wild abandon. When shooting from the passenger seat, I wasn’t taking pictures; I was playing. Later, I could get more serious about shooting.

Clearly, I’m not saying that my approach is right for everyone, but it was beneficial to me. I needed a means of dealing with my personal blocks, and this was one of the things that helped me. (I wish I could say that I had totally stifled the voice of that inner critic, but I can only plug away at it.) The bonus of this playing is that, periodically, I am surprised by a shot that I like quite a lot. (Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, right?) Occasionally, a shot serves primarily as a reminder of a location that I want to revisit and photograph under better circumstances. (The photo above falls in that category.) More often, even the best of the losers are nothing more than pleasant little reminders of the scenery we have enjoyed while traveling. Still, even that is not entirely worthless.

Since I use drive-by photography for experimenting or playing, I don’t have any rules, but these are my general guidelines:

1. I only shoot when I am the passenger. Come to think of it, that one is a rule for me. I know some photographers shoot from the driver’s seat, but I know my limits, too well.

2. I always remind myself that I will discard most of what I shoot from a moving vehicle.

3. I frequently shoot through the front windshield. (This is a great motivation for keeping that windshield clean.) Yes, the windshield is another contributor to degraded image quality. But, shooting out the side window means you have to be more careful to avoid anything close to the vehicle. Even at high shutter speeds, you risk getting shots that are a partially blurred mess. (That being said, if you like the blur effect, you can have a blast shooting this way. On a couple of occasions, I played with this and got some fun pictures not to mention some great material for backgrounds.

So, there you have the confessions of a drive-by photographer. A woman who unashamedly squanders pixels and abuses digital shutter releases to selfishly shoot experimental photos destined for destruction. Just one more sad, but true story.

SoFoBoMoaning

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On a day you have planned for some macro photography, you don’t want to fight 12 to 20 miles-per-hour wind gusts—and broken tree branches already on the deck warning you there may be more where that came from. Thankfully that seems to have finally passed.

On a day you have planned to accomplish anything creative, you don’t want to get by on three hours sleep. I am blessed, and deeply grateful, to be in exceptionally good health considering I am a woman of a certain age—you’ll get no more than that out of me in a public statement. Still, my body pulls a few dirty tricks now and again, and wrings me out good. As I chatted with my general practitioner yesterday about my CT scan, we came to some interesting conclusions about my digestive system. I was elated by the news that I passed the test. Who has time for a surgery now?!! However, since the mystery remains concerning my mysterious episodes, I submitted that my gall bladder evidently “takes a great picture, but just doesn’t work”. My doctor quipped, “You mean it’s pretty, but can’t act.” Perfect. And still one more demonstration that if you mention “The Industry” in Los Angeles, everyone knows you are talking about the film and television industry. Even our most serious-minded and professional doctors can converse in Hollywoodese.)

At any rate, with so many of today’s plans disintegrating, the strategy is obvious: scrap initial plans and rethink the day. Besides, it’s not as if I don’t have a to-do list longer than my arm, so it won’t be a wasted day. Although the end is in sight, the husband and I are still hip-deep in tax preparation. Furthermore, we are deeply immersed in negotiating the sale of one of our small businesses that my husband has operated for twenty-five years. Another education.

And, speaking of education, I am reviewing my well-marked copy of Robin Williams' book, “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” and I have just gotten into my latest acquisition, Pete Masterson’s “Book Design and Production”. (Thank you Paul Lester for the recommendation.) When I wrote my acting books many years ago, I relied pretty much exclusively on “The Self–Publishing Manual” by Dan Poynter for the basics of layout and design, and it is an excellent source. Still, when I got the Robin Williams book, I gave myself a tardy, but swift kick where it would do the most good. Now that I have the Pete Masterson book, I may have to repeat that exercise.

Mr. Masterson’s chapter on software tools is a good news-bad news story for me. The good news is that the author validates my perception that InDesign is more difficult to learn than Pagemaker. (That’s a relief. I didn’t think I had started losing it, since I learned Photoshop at the same time I tried and failed InDesign) The bad news is that he has convinced that if I want to get serious about producing books (and that’s an unanswered question at this point) I should upgrade to InDesign and learn to use the dastardly thing. In the software contest, Pagemaker 7, my current choice, ranks with the “professional quality” programs, but it doesn’t rank number one. That spot goes to the pricey, InDesign. Since I haven’t yet committed to investing another large chunk of cash in a 5th edition of the first acting book or the 2nd edition of the second book—unless they are classics, books get old and die without massive measures to resuscitate. And, we won’t get into the third book that never went beyond the successful, but neglected pilot version that was introduced, and well received, at teachers’ conferences. When you consider that I don’t know how much text I will want to do in future photo books, I am still not convinced that I need to send Adobe anymore of my life’s savings. For now, I will go with “professional quality”, just not the best.

The photo above reminds me that someday I just may want shoot a personal-project photo book in Bodie, California. I could easily spend a week there reveling in the opportunities.

More on The Chicken Coop

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On December 12, I posted a picture of the chicken coop along the West Fork Trail of Oak Creek Canyon. I'm sure you had guessed that I wasn't able to resist taking a look inside. You're right.

Keeping Chickens in Oak Creek Canyon

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Early into the hike on the West Fork Trail, we encountered this wonderful old chicken coop. I loved the shape of it and its rough textures. I wished I could have spent more time exploring that part of the trail, but we had a great more to see. Maybe on the next trip.