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1855 KITCHEN (In the Americana portfolio.) |
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I am often asked the details of this image when I show it at camera clubs. This photo was taken at one of my favorite places for nostalgic photos, “1855 Old Missouri Town” in Blue Springs, Missouri (near Kansas City), where authentic buildings of the mid-1800s from various remote locations throughout Missouri have been brought together for preservation and to create a living history town and farm where authentically dressed staff tend to the live stock and plant and harvest crops to recreate mid-19th century life. Each year, several special events are held, and this image was shot during a “spring cleaning” event held each May, in which the staff opens up all the buildings and perform cooking, cleaning and other chores typical of that era.
In this instance, the lady was preparing apple pies using only the utensils and methods common of that era. Working from a tripod set up in the open doorway, I took several available light exposures as she worked in different areas of the kitchen. In making the print, I added a canvas-like texture. The hallway behind the far wall was brightly lit by sunlight by an open door and required some burning down (darkening); and the window behind the lady also required burning down to gain some detail of the outside. A mild sepia tone enhances the “nostalgic” look. |
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AMISH GAS (In the Americana portfolio.) |
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My wife Jane and I love to visit Amish country. Most Amish communities of any size are a very long distance from Colorado (Ohio, Pennsylvania, eastern Iowa, etc.), but one of our favorite areas is in northwestern Missouri around the little town of Jamesport, which is just close enough to allow a 3-day weekend trip on occasion. Jane, who designs cross stitch patterns for hobby and craft wholesalers, loves to shop in the Amish home shops for ideas or materials to use in her work, as well as Amish keepsakes; and I of course like to photograph the Amish using their old style farming methods (IE: horses).
On one such trip, we were getting ready to head home and stopped on the outskirts of Jamesport for gas. I noticed this buggy by a set of pumps and the Amish gentleman filling some gas containers inside the buggy (although the Amish generally eschew gas powered vehicles, some do use gas powered stationary engines on their farms). Realizing the total incongruity of this scene (a horse powered Amish buggy being "gassed up"?!), I grabbed my camera and 300mm lens to allow a discrete shooting distance, backed away until I could get this framing, and snapped off a few quick hand-held shots. As the Amish usually do not want to be photographed, when the man saw what I was doing he turned his face away from me. I was glad when he turned away, because it is not my intention to photograph the Amish themselves, just certain elements of their lifestyle. And in this case, I would rather have a photo with a non-recognizable person in it, and whether or not the man's face was visible had no effect on the humorous impact of this scene. |
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BABCOCK MILL (In the Rustic America portfolio.) |
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Like covered bridges, the rustic beauty and nostalgic charm of old water wheel powered mills like this fascinate me. Unfortunately for me, there are really no mills like this in the west where I live, so in July of 1999, we scheduled a week’s vacation to tour through Pennsylvania, the Virginias and Carolinas, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee, to photograph some of the old mills in these areas, as well as covered bridges and other subjects.
I had a list of 5 or 6 mills that I felt would provide truly nostalgic photos. There are hundreds of old mills still in tact, including a few that are still in daily operation, but most are not all that photogenic, for one reason or another (away from view on private property, water wheel missing, mill obscured by modern items, water wheel side is inaccessible for a good photographic composition, etc.). The old mill in Babcock State Park near Beckley, West Virginia has been touted as being the most photographed mill in the U.S. It has been pictured many times in books, photography magazines, and in calendars and post cards. During the three or so hours we were at the mill site waiting for better lighting, several other photographers - both snap-shooting tourists and those with professional level cameras - stopped for photographs. The only other locations I have seen this type of constant photographic interest is with the old barns below the Tetons in Wyoming, and at Colorado's Crystal Mill and Maroon Bells. I envisioned a photo with an “old time” look. I photographed from a variety of angles and in different lighting conditions (in full early morning shade, then partial shadowing, and full sun), using three different B&W films and both 35mm and medium format cameras. Heck, I liked this mill so much I even shot a few Kodachromes! My favorite is the composition seen here, shot on 35mm ISO 1250 film for a “grainy” effect. I then used a high contrast filter and slight sepia tone when printing to create the “old” look I desired. With the exception of the lack of water pouring over the wheel, I rate the final results as exactly what I had envisioned and hoped for. The Babcock was the first mill we visited, and ironically, it turned out to be the best one photogenically of the several we found on the trip. (I also rate this photo as the best of any subject from the entire trip!) Some of the other mills provided good basic shots, but none in my estimation came close to showing the rustic charm of the Babcock. The Babcock mill certainly lived up to its reputation for being the country’s most photogenic mill! |
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CRYSTAL CITY MILL (In The Rustic America portfolio.) |
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Over the past three decades, images of this 1892 building perched above a rushing Colorado mountain river have appeared in numerous calendars, books, magazines and art galleries. (Popularly known as the "Crystal Mill", this building was actually the hydroelectric generating plant for the Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mine. Water from the rushing Crystal River was funneled down the long penstock to provide power to make compressed air to power the mine's drills.)
Despite its remote location at the ghost town of Crystal City deep in the Crystal River Valley in the central Colorado Rockies, and reached only by a rough 4-wheel drive road, dozens of photographers - both snap-shooters and serious large format professionals - take its photo every day during the summer and fall when the valley is not sealed off by snow. And I have been no exception - I have lost count of the trips I have made to photograph the old power plant and this area of the Rockies, which I consider to be the most beautiful in all of Colorado. In fact, this power plant was the object of one of my very first “photo excursions” I took soon after I first moved to Colorado back in 1976. I had seen some of the many photos of the old building in its dramatic setting and decided it was time I photographed it. I had only a vague idea of where the power plant was, but was confident I could somehow find it. In the late summer of 1977, I set out on a two-day weekend trip, planning on spending the nights on the back seat of my car (a 1969 Olds 442). To make the proverbial long story shorter, somehow I managed to find the power plant without too much trouble. But I learned very quickly that a 6'2'' guy does not sleep very well cramped into a 5 foot wide rear seat of a mid-sized car. And the drivers of the 4-wheel drive rigs I passed on the road to the power plant surely must have thought I was totally nuts for bringing a passenger car onto a road like this! As it was, my radiator boiled over, I was lucky to not tear my muffler off, and I almost burned out my clutch and a rear axle bearing! (It could have been much worse. My plans called for me to drive on past Crystal City and over Schofield Pass and drop down into Crested Butte. But just past Crystal, the road got REALLY rough, and as a storm was blowing in and night was approaching, I wisely turned around and crawled back to the highway. Subsequent trips would prove this to be the right decision - I would NEVER have made it over the pass in my car. In fact, to this day, a crossing of Schofield - which also requires a fording of the river - is a challenge for the most rugged 4-wheel drive vehicle and experienced 4x4 driver.) In the many years since, I have returned (in 4-wheel drive vehicles!) to the Crystal River Valley and this old power plant many times, even doing an article on the area for Petersen's 4 Wheel and Off Road magazine in 1981, which included one of my Kodachrome shots of the plant. As a result, I have photographed this building many times and in many different ways, yet I still find it to be a great subject. The two photos shown here are good contrasts in that they were taken 15 or more years apart, and with widely different photographic techniques. 
“Crystal Mill #2” seen here was taken on one such trip in the early 1980s on 35mm infrared film. Being somewhat new to infrared at the time, I greatly over-exposed this scene (and the entire roll). The image I had envisioned was one with blazing white foliage against dark skies, but I got a very muddied and washed out sky and foliage and a dark, somewhat contrasty image of the power plant. The results were so disappointing that I never touched the negatives again for over 10 years.
But every now and again I would come across these negatives while looking through my files, and they just “looked” like they should produce a dramatic print - if only I could figure out how to print them! Recently, I experimented with these negatives again, and because I had since acquired my love of the “old time photo” look, I found this stark yet muddy-looking image that popped out of the developer to be very appealing. The image seemed to be straight off the pages of a musty 100 year-old book - it truly looked like a vintage photo. The image is basically a “straight” print from the grossly over-exposed negative shot in dark lighting conditions. I burned down the background foliage for about twice the exposure given the power plant itself - not to make the foliage appear natural, but just to give some hint of the background! Finally, I added a mild sepia tone. “Crystal Mill #1” (shown at the start of this story) was taken in the fall of 1999, over 15 years after the “Mill #2” image above. Again, my goal was to achieve that “black sky / white foliage” look common with infrared, but because I wanted to make a sharper enlargement than infrared film will provide, this time I was shooting with Ilford's relatively new medium format size SFX 200 film. Using a red filter, I got exactly the results I wanted, having to burn down the sky only a little to get the pure black look. (The white of the foliage is not from the film, but from the golden fall colors, which with the red filter, expose as white on B&W film.) Aside from comparing the different films, compositions and techniques used to produce these images, it is also interesting to compare the condition of the power plant and how little it has changed in the years between the time the images were taken. Most old abandoned buildings of this age will have deteriorated significantly in a decade and a half, but because of its popularity, some preventive restoration work has been done (such as support beams and wires inside the old structure) that not only have helped to preserve it in its present condition, but have maintained an authentic appearance. (Indeed, photos of the power plant when it was new show very little change in its appearance or condition in the ensuing 110+ years! It also helps that the power plant, sitting high on a rocky point across the river, is relatively inaccessible to visitors and vandals.) About the only difference one can find in these images is at the top of the penstock caseing leading down to the river. In “Mill #2”, shot in the early 1980s, if you look closely you can see some stair steps sticking out into space; in “Mill #1”, shot in 1999, these steps are gone (these details may not be seen on the screen). The experience of that first trip in 1977 into Crystal City formatted my approach to all the photo trips I have since taken in the intervening 20+ years, be it to some remote section of Colorado, or to Yellowstone or Montana. Liking the idea of being able to sleep inside a vehicle but also seeing the necessity for 4-wheel drive to explore old trails and back roads, after that first trip I went out and bought one of the old Jeep “Utility Wagons” (the forefather of the Wagoneer), which allowed plenty of room in the back to stretch out and plenty of grunt in the gearing and ground clearance to take me anywhere I might want to explore. Since then, I have used a succession of similar vehicles - either the station wagon type 4-wheel drive, or pickups with a camper shell - and have come to enjoy my nights as much as the days on my trips. And from my basic beginnings with that old jeep, I have refined my “tin tipi” camping style to include many of the comforts of home: a compressed gas stove, supply of canned food and dry powered milk (avoids having to carry ice to keep things chilled), convenient little “potty”, two 5 gallon water containers (one with a spigot), mattress and plenty of blankets and a sleeping bag. With this set-up I can cook meals, read in bed, do not have to go outside at night to use the restroom, can wash up, and have all this comfort anywhere I want to explore. (A fellow I used to work with liked to talk about his fully sized, fully equipped motor home, and one day suggested to me that maybe I too should get a motor home for my trips. My response was "Jim, I can do everything in my $10,000 truck with camper shell that you can do in your $60,000 motor home, except one thing". "And what is that?", he asked. My reply - "I cannot stand up in mine!") |
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NIGHT in OLD DURANGO (In the Smoke & Steam portfolio.) |
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It did not take me long after moving to Colorado in August of 1976 to fall completely in love with the Rockies. And after deciding to take up free-lance writing and photography a couple of years later, and after being inspired to concentrate on railroading through the similar work my artist friend Bob Karsten back in Louisiana was doing, I soon was concentrating on the railroads of Colorado and their history.
The major railroad in the early days of Colorado was the Denver & Rio Grande, with a large network of narrow gauge (3 feet wide rails) steam powered rails reaching into almost every mining camp in the Colorado Rockies. And best of all, the Rio Grande still operated one of only two remaining segments of these railroads, as a summer tourist line between Durango and Silverton in southwestern Colorado, using original steam locomotives that had been in service on this line since the 1920s. WOW! Also about this time, I saw a magazine photo taken in Durango - a black & white shot of a trainman thawing a water hose in the steam from a locomotive on a crisp fall morning. The composition of this shot, the posture of the man, the lighting of the shot (a semi-silhouette) and - most importantly - the subject matter in the fall setting, had a strong effect on me, and I found myself increasingly eager to see this remnant of Colorado’s past first hand. So, in June 1980 I journeyed down to old Durango - and walked into a time warp. I will never forget driving into town down the main street past modern shops and buildings, not knowing where the rail yard was but confident it would be easily found just by looking for plumes of black coal smoke. And when I turned the last corner and got my first full look at the rail yard - yes, I was indeed stepping back into time! The original rail facilities dating from 1881 when the railroad first built into this frontier town were still in daily use. The roundhouse and its turntable, the sand tower, the oil- and coal-blackened yard, the rows of old locomotives and other rail equipment, and several grimy black locomotives being serviced for the next day’s runs, with black coal smoke drifting skyward in the cool of the summer’s late afternoon, all contributed to this “time warp”. But I got my most memorable shots that night. I "camped" beside the rail yard in a sleeping bag in the back of my Ford Bronco. This in itself was a magical experience, for I could look over at the dimly illuminated yard and the roundhouse with its yellow light spilling from the interior, smell the soft coal smoke, hear an occasional clunk or hiss from a locomotive boiler, and again easily feel like I was, indeed, in the 1930s or 1940s. And a couple of times during the night, I got up and walked into the yard for some night time exposures of the locomotives and facilities. The Rio Grande did not seem to mind having strangers walking around their grounds - all they asked was that I stay out of the roundhouse. After taking several time exposures through the open roundhouse door of 1923 built #478 softly steaming through the night in the roundhouse, I stood by the turntable just drinking in the gentle ambience of the setting. Near me, one of the night workers talked with a fellow who said he was a retired Rio Grande engineer, and talked of piloting these engines along the narrow rails. I also sensed that this experience might not be available much longer.... In fact, before I could make a return trip the next year, the Rio Grande had sold this last remaining segment of their once vast steam empire to a private operator, who continued to operate the line with steam but replaced the historic Rio Grande name from the tenders with the new name “Durango & Silverton”, and closed the rail yard off to casual visitors like me. And in 1989 the 108 year old roundhouse burned to the ground with all the railroad’s locomotives inside, the victim of a smoldering ember in the walls from a welder’s torch. Today the D&S line is still a most popular tourist destination, running up the very remote and scenic Animas River Canyon between the two old towns. The roundhouse was rebuilt to an authentic appearance, the burned locomotives were all salvaged, repaired and returned to service. The trains continue to provide great opportunities of authentic steam in action, and the new operators have even expanded the Rio Grande’s old summer- and fall-only operations to a year-around schedule, offering chances for shots of steam in the snow. And at times, the D&S gives organized tours of the rail yard and facilities. But somehow, none of this will ever mach that old time ambience I experienced on that one magical night in old Durango, now so long ago.... |
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