Wickenburg – Page 3 – On the road with Jim

Red Rocks and Twin Peaks

Last week’s photo—Pair of Threes—was the final good image from the trip where I was Fred’s guest. Although I captured over 60 frames, most of them were variations, or they didn’t live up to my expectations. That happens a lot. But I wanted to share more of the natural beauty in the Wickenburg Mountains with you, so I packed the truck and returned for an afternoon last week. I didn’t make it back to the mine, but I found other lovely scenes to shoot in the area—besides, the sky was being very cooperative.

Sunday didn’t start out all that great, but as the day went on, the gray sky started to break up, so late in the afternoon, I headed back to the San Domingo Wash area. If you’re a regular reader, you know that’s the time of day that I prefer to work. After spending an hour in the field, the light was getting very low, so I started to make my way home because I wasn’t all that keen about getting stuck in some quicksand after dark.

Red Rocks and Twin Peaks—With the sun on the horizon, a rock outcrop glow red before a pair of dormant cinder cones.

It was then that I shot this week’s featured image—Red Rocks and Twin Peaks—just as the sun was on the horizon below the cloud line. As I drove, I noticed the rock outcrop glowing red in the setting sun, so I looked for a place where the composition would work. I’m pleased with how there’s enough light to add texture to the desert without adding clutter, but I’m jazzed about the range of color in the sky. After I took this shot, the sun went below the horizon, and I thought, “It couldn’t get any better.” I headed home.

Pink Virga—On the drive home a line of low clouds turned pink with streaks of virga emanating from them. Of course, all I could do is snap a photo through the windshield.

Imagine all of the internal screaming I did when a line of small clouds started showing pink virga as I was driving west on US 60. I’ve only witnessed this phenomenon a couple of times, and it never happens when I’m ready to capture it with a suitable foreground. In frustration, I jammed the camera to the windshield and fired a couple of blind shots while I was driving. Mother Nature can be very helpful to a photographer, but she doesn’t always play fair.

You can see a larger version of Red Rocks and Twin Peaks on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from the Wickenburg Mountains.

Until next time — jw

P.S.: Queen Anne and I would like to send our best wishes to you. We hope your holidays are safe, warm and happy.

Pair of Threes

I’m all alone this week because Queen Anne has gone home to her sister’s because they made Christmas cookies this week, and Anne goes where the sugar is. For me, it’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the bleeding from my ears has stopped since the yelling ceased. The bad news is that I don’t have a copy editor this week, so this will be a short post. I don’t know how to spell all the big words she uses. She’s coming home on Thursday so things will be back to normal then. Pray for me.

Meanwhile back at the mines—or more specifically, San Domingo Wash where Anderson Mill is.

Back in the days when everybody used film—that’s the cellulose stuff you put in cameras to capture images before we used electrons—I was a stingy shooter. Because each frame cost a buck (sheet film was five-times that), I wouldn’t waste my money on something I wasn’t sure was good. Now that electrons are cheap (and the prices keep falling), I’ll snap just about anything that catches my eye. Often that shot turns out to be junk, but one out of a thousand deserves a second look. That’s how this week’s featured image happened.

Pair of Threes -Three saguaro along the ridge overlooking the San Domingo Wash where the Anderson Mill is. The three wispy clouds make up the pair.

If you’re the kind of person that lingers on every word that I write, you’ll recall that in my previous posts that the Anderson Mill structure is several stories tall and that the brothers welded it together as needed. In the short time that Fred and I were there, I wanted to poke around the different levels. Now, there are steel-treed stairs, but most of them didn’t have handrails. So I walked the truck paths that snaked up the hillside. It was at one of the switchbacks that I looked up and saw three saguaros along the ridge. Without thinking, I snapped the camera shutter and then dismissed it. When I saw that image on the computer, I knew I could use it because the clouds made the photo. I call this image Pair of Threes.

You can see a larger version of Pair of Threes on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from San Domingo Wash.

Until next time — jw

BTW: Anne’s flight comes in after 11 pm. If you were a good friend, you’d pick her up … and keep her.

Retaining Wall

There are hundreds—if not thousands—of abandoned towns and mines in Arizona. Most of them don’t have much to offer, because all of the things of interest have been taken away. As I pointed out in last week’s post about Anderson Mill, the good stuff has already been salvaged. In Arizona, there are about ten ghost towns, like Jerome, Bisbee, and Oatman where the residents were able to transform their community into a tourist destination, but the majority of them have returned to nature, and you’re lucky to find a concrete slab.

Last week’s adventure to Anderson Mills is an example of my point. I would have been delighted if the sheds, trucks and other equipment remained on site. Alas, that’s not the case. At least the main-processing structure was still standing, probably because it was welded together and pirates couldn’t easily strip them. From what was left, I even got an idea of how the Anderson brothers cobbled together the plant with scrounged parts and probably no plans. My dad worked like that. He figured it out in his head and would slap things together. I should ask Fred—who’s a certified nuclear welding inspector—what he thought of the fabrication.

As I was shooting, I looked for strong elements of design; colors, patterns,lines—that sort of thing. As we were ready to make the trip home, I didn’t havemuch time to spend behind the camera. The most color that caught my eye rightaway was a retaining wall, built out of Army landing pads. The mica processingplant is gravity feed and sits maybe 50 feet above the bed of the wash. To makea level base up there, the Andersonsbuilt a reinforced embankment wall out of panels and then back-filled it withrubble.

When I took this picture of the week, I focused on the panels that had alternating yellow color values. I like that against the rusty steel corner plates. However, I didn’t notice the narrow gauge mine-car tracks holding the bottom together. It seems like an expensive piece of scrap metal compared with the other building materials used. I like the abstract feeling of this image, and I call it Retaining Wall.

You can see a larger version of Retaining Wall on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from San Domingo Wash.

Until next time — jw

Water Pump Gears Picture of the Week

Once again the page on my calendar has changed, and I need to find a new site in the county to photograph. I spent all last week pouring over my maps that I had spread across the dining room table looking for an exciting candidate. I wanted to avoid the Christmas decorations towns put up during the holidays, so I was resigned to someplace rural. Then—on Monday—during my morning bike ride, I passed the Poteets who were out for a morning stroll. As I passed by, he shouted out an offer to ride in Fred’s fabulous four-wheel flier. The park’s off-road group planned an outing to Anderson Mill. I didn’t know what that was, so when I got home, I looked it up, and behold, it was in Yavapai County—only by a mile, but it still counts, and that meant the trip would kill one stone with two birds. I immediately sent him an email accepting his invitation.

Anderson Mill – A World War II-era mine and mill that produced mica for electrical insulators.

Before I talk about the mill, let me explain the trip. The off-road group is a bunch of friendly people who have all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) or rock-crawling Jeeps, and they go on regular outings to places of interest to drive their toys. It’s the trip and not the destination that’s important; the more circuitous the route, the better. We spent all day driving to a place that’s only a half hour away if you go by the highway into Wickenburg. They drove down the washes and trails where Fred and I got lost a couple of years ago, and they did it on purpose. They relish getting dusty; something they feel is a feature and not an off-road nuisance. The dust was terrible when Fred and I went out alone, but this time we followed a half-dozen other ATVs. When I walked into the house that evening and brushed the dust off, it looked exactly like in this YouTube clip from the new Cohen Brothers Netflix movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Another masterpiece. Try to imagine Gene Autry meets the Twilight Zone).

Meanwhile, back at the mill …

Water Pump Gears – The gears of the Anderson Mill water pump located north of Wickenburg.

Anderson Mill was a homestead claim run by Sid Anderson and his brother (documents don’t show the brother’s name) during the World War II period. They mined and processed mica—a mineral useful for electrical insulation and drywall joint compound among other things. The mine and mill are located in the San Domingo Wash north of Wickenburg and was productive until 1951—when plastics became a cheaper substitute. The mill’s ruins consist of welded panels and stairs topped by a rotating tumbler that—oddly enough—still has the original drive belt. As you would expect, pirates have already salvaged all the working motors and engines.

This week’s featured image is from a pump that pushed water up to the tumbler. The smaller gear drove the large one, which eventually cycled a piston pump. A Hit-and-Miss engine probably powered the whole Rube Goldberg setup. The things that compelled me to take this image are the relationship of the gears, the radial pattern of the spokes, the mass of iron bolted to an I-beam, and the beautiful rust patina. I gave the photograph the simple name of Water Pump Gears.

You can see a larger version of Water Pump Gears on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from San Domingo Wash.

Until next time — jw

West of Center Art Show New Show Announcement

The inmates are taking over the asylum again. Each year at this time, the folks at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum take a vacation and before they leave town, they toss the keys to the Wickenburg Art Club. Like a bunch of teenagers hyped on hormones, we throw a wild party … well, we actually host an exhibition of local artists for three months. Nobody’s in town anyway, so why not?

This is the seventh year that the Art Club has put on the West of Center Art Exhibition and Sale and it’s really a big deal around these parts. The members each submit up to five pieces for consideration and a jury selects the best for the show. Year after year it’s a good show because there’s a lot of good talent in the Wickenburg area. The show runs from July 28^th through October 28^th at the Desert Caballeros Museum’s Learning Center at the northwest corner of Highway 60 and Tegner Street. The hours are 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. The store is closed Mondays. There are also art demonstrations on Saturdays from 1 – 3 p.m. If you can stop by then, we’ll learn ya somthin’.

Blue Mesa was my favorite shot from the Petrified Forest last summer. It was selected to be part of the West of Center Art Show this year.

The jury selected two of my submissions for the show this year and I’m excited to see them hanging. My first piece is a shot I took from the Petrified Forest last year called Blue Mesa. It’s a 17 x 10½ print in one of my standard black frames. You may remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about how I was having trouble printing it because of ink problems. Well, I solved them and I’m happy with the results.

For my second entry, I did something exotic (for me). I sent my image of Mud Arch off to be printed on a sheet of aluminum 15 inches wide by 20 inches high and when it came back it looked stunning. The colors and detail came out exceptionally well. Because the print’s surface is cleanable with a mild window cleaner, I didn’t have to cover it with glass. Instead, I float-mounted it in a rustic-finished walnut frame. Despite the extra costs for this process, I plan to keep this process in my repertoire.

I hope you get a chance to stop by and take in the show. I think you’ll be surprised by the quality of art on display. The Saturday demonstrations are interesting and informative. Last year, for example, Stan Strange’s talk on Cell Phone Photography turned into the basis for the photo classes the club put on this spring. After the show, put the top down on your hot-rod and stop by Screamer’s drive-in for a cheeseburger and shake.

Until next time — jw

Reach for the Sky Picture of the Week

I drove down past the Safeway into the Vulture Mountains last evening to do some photography. My intent was to capture an image of Vulture Peak shining in the sunset, so I drove around until I found an angle where I could get the image that I visualized and set up my camera. It didn’t work. From the spot I was shooting, it would work better as a sunrise shot. While at that scene, I saw this funny little saguaro on my right and decided to shoot it instead. I call it little, but even with its center trunk lopped off, it’s taller than I am.

By the time I got set up for this image, the sun was down and it was already into the blue hour—the period after the sun has set but still light enough to see colors. It wasn’t until I began to concentrate on the saguaro that I noticed the near-full moon rising, so I’m going to toss it in for no extra charge. The cactus is interesting for a couple of reasons. Somehow it lost the top of its main trunk and it has sprouted new arms, of which one looks like a melon … or even a head if you have a vivid imagination. The second notable thing is that it’s still plump with water even though we haven’t had rain for months—which may be the reason it was able to generate the new growth. In any case, it has cool apartments for woodpeckers, cactus wrens, and maybe an owl family this summer.

I called this shot Reach for the Sky and you can see a larger version of it on its Web page here. I hope you enjoy viewing my new pico’-week and that you’ll tell me what you think. Maybe next week, I may get out of bed early enough to get a better version of my first idea.

Until next time — jw

Gold Rush Days 2018 New photographs on display at fine arts show.

It’s February again and that means that Wickenburg will be celebrating Gold Rush Days this weekend (Feb 9-11). It’s the closest thing that we have to a street party. Wickenburg closes the streets around the city library to make room for carnival rides, food vendors, arts and crafts booths. The rodeo grounds—down by the river—will have a senior pro rodeo—old guys and gals take the spotlight.

There used to be a lot of local places to eat down around the fair, but most of them have closed. Anita’s Cocina—one of our better known Mexican places—is located at the fair’s center so they make a killing over the weekend. Another place that’s within walking distance is Nana’s Sandwich Shop on Tegner. They have a limited sandwich menu, but they bake a fabulous Lemon/Blueberry bread that you have to try. Be warned, it sells out quickly. Next, to the museum, one block over is the Local Press. Here you’ll find hand-made sandwiches with interesting flavor combinations. It’s another one of our favorites.

The event that is important for me is the Fine Arts Show held at the library. I have a couple of photographs that will be on display. One is Piedmont Crossing—the night photo of a crossing guard that was in the West Valley Art Show in Surprise. The second is a brand new print that I made last week called: Mine Mack. It’s of an old Mack truck at Robson’s Mining World. I’m really jazzed at how well the truck’s patina came out in the photo.

Mack Truck – A classic truck that miners used to haul stuff.

To be included in the art show, I also have to volunteer to work it. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing this year, but last year I was Sunday’s guest host. In any case, I’ll be around Saturday or Sunday afternoon. The weather will be great on Saturday with rain possible on Sunday. If you’re in the mood for a day trip, come on up and join in on the fun.

Until next time — jw