photography – Page 19 – On the road with Jim

KofA Moonrise Picture of the Week

For the last couple of years, on the drive to see the dentist, we drive past a place that I wanted to photograph. That sounds like it’s down the street, but our dentist is three hours away in Mexico. When we pass by in the morning, we’re on our way to an appointment, and I’m too tired to stop on the way home. I decided that I can’t do it justice with a drive-by shooting. I need to make it a destination.

The place I’m talking about is the Kofa Wildlife Refuge in the far west part of Arizona and near the western edge of the Sonoran Desert, which is the Colorado River thirty miles away. It’s along US 95, a half hour south of Quartzsite. The refuge spans three mountain ranges: the Castle Dome, the Kofa, and the New Water ranges. It supports a herd of desert bighorn sheep large enough to allow limited hunting. The refuge also has a couple of indigenous plants that only grow within its boundaries.

KofA Moonrise – A partial moon rises over the KofA Range in western Arizona.

Of the three ranges, I think the Kofa Range is the most photogenic; at least along its western face. There’s a central mountain—Signal Peak—that is surrounded by shorter—but impressive—needles and jagged peaks. It reminds me of the Superstitions a bit as they’re both volcanic in origin and have a similar geographical setting. Early prospectors called them the Shit House Mountains because they thought the spires looked like outhouses. Mapmakers didn’t care for that name, so they changed the name to Stone House and finally Kofa after the King of Arizona Mine—an operation that pulled millions of dollars of gold from the mountains in the twenty years that it operated.

Besides the rugged terrain and the bighorn, the Kofa has Palm Canyon. The canyon requires a short but steep half-mile hike to see a dozen and a half California Fan Palms growing in a vertical gash in the mountain. I know that you can see palms anywhere in Arizona, but these are the only native ones in the state. They’re a holdover from one of the Ice Ages. I failed to get a good shot on this trip because to get close you would need to be a mountain goat, and the sun shines on them for a limited time. When I go back, I’ll take a different lens.

This week’s featured image was an afterthought. I was driving down from Palm Canyon and stopped to capture an image in the west. When I got out of the truck, I saw a three-quarter moon rising above Signal Peak, so I instinctively fired a couple of shots, but quickly dismissed them as insignificant because of the wide lens I used. Wide lenses make a small moon even smaller. When I saw this shot with those streaky clouds and golden light on my monitor, I thought this would be perfect for an introduction to this month’s topic. I call it KofA Moonrise (I think it’s the way we should spell the range’s name). Incidentally, Palm Canyon is in the dark area beneath Signal Peak.

You can see a larger version of KofA Moonrise 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 KofA Wildlife Refuge.

Until next time — jw

Double Takes Show – 2019 Art show announcement

I’m pleased to announce the 2019 Double Takes Art Show sponsored by the Wickenburg Art Club. Each year, the club asks of its photographers to submit a few of their photographs. Then, the club’s other artists select an image from the pile and produce a piece of art inspired the photo that they chose. Then the collaboration is hung together at the club’s gallery in January. The resulting work can be a painting, sculpture, or a piece of written work. It’s fun to see the creative results.

Long Canyon Cottonwood — A mature cottonwood tree masks a side slot canyon within Long Canyon. A member of the Poplar family, cottonwoods thrive where water is plentiful. A healthy specimen like this is a sigh that water is just under the dry creek’s surface.

I’m pleased that three of my images were chosen by club artist for interpretation and will be on display. The show runs from January 5^th thru February 9^th from 1- 4 pm. The gallery is at 188 S. Tegner Street. Turn south at the stop light just east of the railroad underpass on US 60.

Point of Light — Light falls on Navajo Sandstone outcrop along Dry Creek during an approaching summer thundershower.

I’m hoping that you can visit Wickenburg, grab a late breakfast at Spur’s Café, lunch at Wickenburg Ranch, or hamburgers at Screamer’s Drive-In and take in the show.

Yellow Streak — Aspen forms a yellow line like a streaking comet as they descend Boulder Mountain in Utah.

Until next time … jw

Sonoran Winter Afternoon

It’s the end of the year already, and that means that this week’s photo wraps up the month and year. In a few days, we’ll begin a new year, shooting new locations and new subjects. But I’ll worry about that next week. For now, let’s finish with the trip up the San Domingo Wash, which is where I shot this week’s featured image.

While I was out exploring the mountains north of Wickenburg, I experienced the desert in changing light—from late afternoon to sunset. In that short amount of time, the desert’s character changed as the sun sank lower in the sky. When it was behind the clouds, the scene was dull and empty. Later, when the sun came out, it was warm and full of life, and all the different plants stood out like characters on a stage. At sunset, those characters blended into an image of textures and shapes. Meanwhile, the sky became a more critical player in the story.

A late afternoon sun lights up the saguaros in the mountains north of Wickenburg, Arizona.

With this week’s image I call Sonoran Winter Afternoon, it was the saguaro near the hilltop and in the middle of the frame that made me raise the camera to my eye. Although it may not seem notable, desert dwellers will spot that it’s a very tall specimen. It stands out like an NBA player walking down New York’s Fifth Avenue. It’s a trophy shot in the same way as one with multiple arms or with a crest would be. After my first shot, I worked to get a better composition and show it among others for scale. I like how the warm afternoon sun gives the vegetation a golden glow which contrasts nicely with the blue sky patches. I hope you enjoy it.

You can see a larger version of Sonoran Winter Afternoon on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll be in an entirely different Arizona place. I also have some announcements coming up that I’m looking to get the New Year with a good start. Here’s hoping yours will be better and brighter.

Until next time — jw

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

Central Commercial Picture of the Week

Before Interstate 40, before Route 66, and before the Railroad, Seligman was a quiet Havasupai Village where Beale’s Wagon Road crossed the Big Chino Wash, and the reason you stopped there was for water. Back then it was called Prescott Junction because you could hop on a stagecoach to the territorial capital. Not a lot of people traveled that wagon trail because it was rough, dangerous, and in the middle of the God-forsaken desert. All of that changed in 1849 when James Marshall discovered gold in California, and suddenly everybody and his brother wanted a share.

Congress immediately passed a bill to give away ridiculous chunks of land as incentives for railroad upstarts to lay tracks from coast to coast, but the Civil War got in the way. Shortly after peace broke out, the railroads got to work in earnest. In those days, you had to plan for fuel and water stops every 30 miles, and that’s the reason railroads built regularly spaced stops every 30 miles. They renamed the town Seligman for Jesse—one of the big money guys from New York. Being halfway between Flagstaff and the California border, its site was in an excellent spot for crew swaps, and since there was plenty of flat space, the company built a large switching yard here. So, Seligman became a busy stop along the route. The trains don’t stop anymore, in fact, they don’t even tap the horn as they rush by on the quarter-hour.

Seligman’s historic district is within walking distance of the old depot, which—unfortunately—was demolished in 2008. It had a Harvey House—like the one in Winslow—and a reading room. I would have loved to have added them to my collection, but I’m a decade late. The old section of town has several notable buildings: a garage with gas pump island, a few warehouses, a boarding home, and some overnight cabins that the train crews used.

Central Commercial – the Pitts and Washington Central Commercial Department Store on Route 66 in Seligman Arizona. It needs to be restored to red brick, and gold lettering with a green awning.

The building that I kept coming back to was this store. I immediately walked to it, because of the flag mural and yellow ribbons on the side wall. After walking around town, I returned and shot some other angles. When I got out the next morning, there it was again, and I liked how the daybreak lit the front. It shows off every brick and the fascia detail along the top. It even reveals some of the original sign hiding under the whitewash. From the tour guide that I picked up at the barber shop, this is the Pitts & Washington Central Commercial Department Store built-in 1903. The brick was probably red, and the signs were gold—like a Woolworth’s. I believe the whitewash was added later to accommodate new tenants. It’s my picture of the week, and I call it Central Commercial.

I think it would be neat to see it restored and brought back to life as a working museum. I see it stocked with period and retro items for sale. There’s not enough traffic to sustain such a free-standing business, but maybe a display center for an online store could work—sort of an Amazon for antiques. I feel the car culture that the town caters to would patronize a store that carried upscale items like that. On the other hand, maybe it’s too late because that’s my generation’s thing, and we’re fading rapidly.

You can see a larger version of Central Commercial 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 a different place in Yavapai County.

Until next time — jw

Chevy Skull Picture of the Week

I began writing a post for this week’s picture and wondered how cow skulls (horns) and car hoods became a thing. It seemed to originate in Texas. My earliest recollection of the meme was a red ’59 Caddy convertible with a Longhorn hood ornament—or maybe that was JR’s car in Dallas. As a car guy, I never understood why you’d tacky up a perfect vehicle with bovine parts. I guess it symbolized decadent wealth—that you had so much money you could thumb your nose at decorum—a new money thing.

Then, the genre moved to New Mexico, and the horns became a whole skull. Often, the cow’s head is hand-painted or jewel-encrusted. The cars changed too. They were no longer shiny new Cadillacs but heaps from the fifties with rust and dull patina. The whole car-cow thing transitioned from tackiness to art.

Chevy Skull – A cow skull decorates the hood of an era Chevy Truck and whispers tales of cattle ranching during the Second World War in Seligman.

While photographing Seligman, I saw this Chevy truck with a cow skull on the hood; I didn’t bat an eye and thought, “This seems perfectly normal.” Now that I look at this week’s image, I don’t think the skull is even mounted—it’s just sitting there as decoration. Interestingly, each object in the photograph would tell its own story, but combined, they conjure up an entirely different tale. I imagine a narrative of round-ups, chuck wagons, miles of open range, and nights under the stars. I guess it’s a story about a rancher growing beef during the Second World War and how hard his life was.

Sometimes, when I walk away from shooting an image like this, I have a hunch that it’s a good shot, and I can’t wait to see it on paper. This one, however, didn’t stand out in my memory. It wasn’t until I saw it on my computer screen that I considered it a keeper. It’s not about the skull but how the sunrise falls on the truck’s grill. The head balances the dark area in the composition. I named this image Chevy Skull.

~~Click here to see a larger version of Chevy Skull on its Web Page~~. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and return next week when we show another featured image from Seligman and Route 66.

Until next time — jw