Hallowe’en ghost town

This was a reasonably busy week for me in a photo gathering sense. Mid-week I was asked to head out to Ebon for indoor shots (in the usual challenging lighting) to get the first “under saddle” photos of one of the many nice home-bred youngsters that is starting her education as a riding horse. I don’t dread these requests the way I used to, as I have finally figured out which camera/lens/settings combination will allow me to get shots that I’m not completely ashamed of. Outdoors, no problem. Indoors, a challenge, at least the indoors that I have access to. Those shots turned out well enough, so then management decided to up the anxiety ante for me by requesting a return visit to get some chute jumping shots on Friday morning. Normally indoors chute jumping is my most dreaded assignment of any given year, but this one went strangely well all round. I stayed calm, didn’t make too many technical errors, have noted the one I did make so I can avoid it next time, and the whole thing was actually a reasonably pleasant experience. Quite unaccountable. Who knows, a bit more practice and I might actually start looking forward to it. Even a tough photo shoot is better than no photo shoot in my world, and it is satisfying to feel that I have learned enough along the way to be able to do this type of shot adequately.
We (daughter Margaret, grandson Mark and I) had made tentative plans to go shoot the twisted trees of the Hafford area on Saturday, but it being Hallowe’en day, it seemed to me much more in keeping to make another attempt at the ghost town that we failed to locate on our August attempt (see my August 3rd blog post for details) . Unlike the last time, we had a map that actually had roads on it (not the large blank area with a place name in the middle of nowhere of the last map), we had gas in the van (were running on empty in addition to being lost last trip), and we had a GPS. Perhaps most importantly, two out of three of us were women, who are actually willing to *consult* the maps and pay attention to the GPS, although I have to confess that Mark was the one who noticed when the GPS had useful information to impart. Margaret and I were going on intuition and forgot to check it. The short version of all this is that this time we actually got there.
Not to say our trip was uneventful. It was (as usual) cold, overcast, dark, and chilly when we headed out of town. By the time we were a few kilometers beyond the city limits, it was snowing quite heavily and a strong wind had come up. Then we went through several combinations of snow, rain, and freezing rain, all the while making hopeful comments that “maybe we would drive out of it”, and “so far the roads don’t seem *too* bad”, followed by “well, we can always turn back if we have to”. We stopped once by a large slough which had a large gathering of corvids (couldn’t tell from a distance whether they were crows or ravens) for me to get a couple of shots of their rapidly retreating forms, and I was encouraged to see that the camera was picking up a lot more light than actually seemed to be around. That made me want to carry on, as I’ll put up with a lot of bad weather as long as the light is remotely adequate for shooting.
Eventually, following the twists and turns of the map on ever smaller roads that remained surprisingly good for navigation, we came to our ghost town. I had found some photos of it online as part of my research, so I knew it had a grain elevator, which was a great help in spotting it from a distance. It was well worth the time and effort we had invested (both times) to see this place. For someone in love with photographing ruin and decay, as I am, it holds endless potential.
Today’s shots are primarily from the Saturday outing. Shot one shows the grain elevator with Mark leaning into the wind on the path up to it. Shot two was taken inside the elevator, and shows some of the working mechanisms. There is still grain sitting inside on the floor, and the odd thing that I noticed, both in the elevator and in the other buildings, is that there was no evidence of mice, rats, or any other living creatures. I would have expected that, at least in the elevator, and for the grain to be gone or disturbed, but no. Very strange.
Shot three is the broken north window on one of the houses. Windows on three sides of the house were damaged, but intact on a fourth side. Again, odd.
Shot four is taken from the front door of an abandoned farm-house south of the ghost town. I loved the colours and textures of the surfaces in this house and want to go back again when there are better light conditions and it isn’t pouring rain. That said, I’m impressed with the job my lens did with no flash and available light. I’m a sucker for crackle texture and this staircase had it in spades. I took this shot from the front door jamb. There are safety issues involved in entering old ruins, with the potential of falling through the floor, having the upstairs floor fall on me, or breathing in who-knows-what in the old dusty and moldy surroundings (hantavirus, anyone?). Then there is the respect issue. I tend to feel fairly strongly about making minimal impact, not touching or moving things, and generally taking only my photographic images away with me. After all, these buildings still belong to someone and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the owner if he happens to come along while I’m in the midst of my shoot.
So, all in all, a very satisfactory way to spend part of a Saturday, despite the weather handicaps. I’m already planning a return trip before the snows make getting there too difficult, but Hallowe’en day was the perfect time for our first visit. I’m thinking it might need to become an annual pilgrimage on that day.
The final shot is one that I have been working on in the computer. It features one of the North Fork gypsy cob stallions, overlaid onto a page from the Book of Kells. This is one of several variations on the same theme that I am developing.