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At the end of our 1998 Lone Pine workshop, a number of
us who stayed for a few extra days of photographing went to Cerro Gordo
for a day. Cerro Gordo had once been a flourishing silver mining town
(1880-1930) populated by about 2,000 men and a few ladies dwelling at the
local brothels. The town is located about ten miles up a dangerous
one-lane gravel road due east of Keeler, California at an altitude of
about 8000 feet. During Cerro Gordo’s glory years, tons of high-grade
ore were taken from her thirty-seven miles of tunnel. It was then sent
down the mountain on an elaborate tram system to Keeler where it was
smelted down to bullion and loaded on the steamboat “Bessie Brady” for
a trip south across the Owens Lake. The bullion was then loaded on wagons
that would be pulled by teams of eighteen to twenty mules for the long
hall to Los Angeles.
As we drove up the worn road to Cerro Gordo we were met
with several extraordinary views of the dry lakebed and the vastness of
the Owens Valley to the south. I could only imagine the view the hardy
souls were blessed with when they built this road straight up the
mountain. It must have been a sight to behold when water once filled the
now bone-dry lakebed. I could imagine seeing the ranches beginning at lake’s
edge and expanding to the foothills of the Sierra with cattle grazing in
the expansive grasslands and green orchards doting the landscape. I could
envision a perfect reflection of the Sierra in the Owens Lake during the
early morning stillness. I could imagine huge thunderclouds drifting over
the valley showering life into this area. And now…the life was gone…
gone down the aqueduct to fill the pockets of the Los Angeles water
thieves and to support the thirst of eighty trillion people who live on
the California coast.
A few of the buildings still stand in Cerro Gordo and
the nice folk who now own the old town do their best to keep what is still
standing propped up against the harsh weather and occasional earthquakes.
The place is a true photographer’s paradise…assuming one likes old
buildings, old machinery and history scattered around in huge clumps in
all directions. It didn’t take long for the cameras to come out of the
cars and onto the tripods. Everyone was excited about the opportunities
presented and a lot of film was being exposed at a rapid rate. I found
many people in our group photographing interior studies using very long
exposure times and working hard on their reciprocity problems. It was a
great exercise for these folks and I was delighted that they had the
chance to do something we had talked about repeatedly during the workshop.
I walked around, did what I could to help those
who had questions and I tried to relax. The workshop was over and it was
time to unwind. I knew that I had to calm down in order to get a good
photo. For me, relaxation is the key element. If I push to find a photo…
if I become agitated or anxious I might just as well go home. The weather
was turning nasty…cold, cloudy, occasional rain and sleet. I was
becoming very agitated. I finally gave up the idea that I would get a good
shot this day. I grabbed my lunch from the car and went into the old
hotel, pulled up to a table and started eating. I looked out the aged
hotel windows to the south and I became infatuated. I stared myself into a
hypnotic trance…just stared and stared until I woke up and remembered
just what I was doing there in the first place…the window was my
photograph. I would shoot the image from the outside looking in. There was
no question about it. It was my photograph and I knew it was going to be a
good one. Leaving my lunch behind, I grabbed my equipment from the car and
went to work. There it was…my photograph in all of its glory…what a
sight! The gods spoke to me.
I set the camera up about twelve feet from the wall and
aligned the film plane horizontally and vertically as close as possible to
the old crooked structure. I used front shift to position the window and
stovepipe just right in the composition. Adjustments in the front standard
were used to adjust the lens to wall distance for the proper arrangement
and I used the rear standard to achieve proper focus. A slight swing with
the rear standard was used to achieve good focus on the stovepipe,
which was the nearest object. In this scenario, I should have used front
swing to make sure I would not introduce distortion but the old building
was leaning in all directions and I felt that my choice for using rear
swing was fine. Using my Fuji 450mm lens at its widest aperture, I
critically focused exactly between the near stovepipe and the far wall by
using the rear standard. In other words, I made the near and far subjects
equally out of focus. I then closed the lens to f32 and checked the ground
glass carefully with my 6X loupe for sharp focus. No further adjustments
were needed because the image was sharp.
With my trusty spot meter, I found that I only had 2.5
stops of light between the important shadows and high values. This
indicated an expansion development of the negative to insure a full-scale
rendition of the scene. Otherwise the image would print dull and muddy
with no good tonal separation. I decided to add a filter to the front of
the lens, which would help boost the contrast. One at a time, I looked at
the scene through each of my filters. I choose the dark green as the most
pleasing to my eye. It darkened the low tonalities and lightened the high
values of the weathered wood. The old-fashioned white curtains hanging in
the window were brightened by the filter and seemed to take on a radiant
quality. Small reflections in the window seemed to separate into pleasing
tones while the deep shadows inside the structure deepened and uncluttered
the composition. I had a three stop filter factor, a one half stop bellows
extension factor and a reciprocity factor with my standard Ilford 5+ film.
My exposure would be 7 seconds at f32. Thank God I remembered to consider
all of these crazy factors. Instinct told me that the
scene needed something. I liked the organization of the
composition very much. I liked the window on the left. I liked the
stovepipe on the right. I liked the old weathered wood and the complete
feeling of the image, but… it needed something…it surely needed
something. The window and stovepipe were of equal interest and the
weathered wall was an extraordinary framework, but my optic receiver
needed something more to look at.
My dear wife Marta was at my side helping me with whatever she could in
my state of being an artist… being completely oblivious to all but
myself and to what I was doing. I turned to Marta and asked her, “Would
you go inside the hotel and sit in the middle of the window? I want to see
your face looking out?” “Well…do I have to take my clothes off?”
She replied. “Do you want me to be nude in the window? Chuck…it’s
cold in there!” “No!” I said, “I just want to see your face
peering out from between the curtains. Besides, no one could subject
anyone to such horrible conditions and indifference…not even me”■ |
