Ghost Town: Scranton, Utah

From time to time, I go ghost town hunting... to satisfy all of my photography, outdoors and hiking joys all at once. I'll post about my escapades, in hopes that it will help other ghost town hunters/photographers.

Last weekend, I went to Scranton, Utah which is a short-lived mining town in what I believe is in the Tintic Mountain range. From what I found, it was settled in 1908 and grew to about 100 people. It mined zinc and lead, and it pretty much dried up by 1918. So the structure in the photo is at most 100-years-old!

It's exact GPS location is on the Wikipedia page, or on the last link, that takes you to the Google Maps page.

I had read several different accounts of what was left. There were housing structures still standing in several accounts, like the old one here on ghosttowns.com. However, rest assured, those aren't there anymore. It seems a fire may have laid waste to any of the actual residential portion of the old town.

However, what remains are one structure (which seemed to be a part of the mining production), several open mines (which were covered with rebar), some old mining equipment and a lot of tailings.

While there isn't a whole lot left of this town... it's a gorgeous area. It's a steep, narrow canyon that opens up to a nice prairie where Scranton used to be. It was a nice a drive and fun hike!

The rest of my photos from Scranton are in my set on flickr. Feel free to check them out!

Raptor'd!

Just a brief post... because this is the first time I A) stumbled accidentally across wildlife (especially in the city) and B) first time I did A) and had a camera that could adequately capture it!

It's a photo of a raptor, eying it territory over the University of Utah campus.

Enjoy the photo, I hope to get more with a bigger lens (I used my 80-200 f/2.8 on this one... want to bust out the 120-400 f/4.5-5.6 this week on it!).

The Wide-Angle... Panorama!

So, above is a link to my latest panorama. It's a 210-degree, 63-shot HDR. I'll go through the process of arriving at the final product...

First... find something that's worth photographing. My friend and I are quasi-avid ghost town hunters. So, on Saturday (June 11), we decided to drive around the rural high desert in southern Tooele County, in Northwest Utah. We came across the remains above on a dirt road near an abandoned mine.

Second... Once you've scouted it out and like what you find, you should set up your gear. I use my tripod:



I use a pano head, which attaches to the above tripod and allows my camera to pivot on the nodal point of the lens. My awesome brother-in-law, Paul Jeran, made this one for me, but there are several others out there on the commercial market:



Here's what my tripod looks like with the pano head mounted on it:



Third... you need to know what the nodal point is on your lens, and set up the pano head so that it pivots at the correct point. The type of lens AND camera dictate the settings. I'm using a Nikon D300 and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8.

Fourth... execute! After setting up the gear, and fastening the camera to said gear, fire away. To get this particular shot I:

Set my lens to f/8
Set my camera for a 9-exposure bracket at 1 stop
Shot at 15mm
Rotated the pano head at 30 degrees per shot

Here is what the base of my pano head looks like. It's marked off in 2-degree increments:



I highly advise using a remote trigger to minimize tripod shake.

Finally... I returned home, dumped the card on to my server, exported them into PT Gui, and off I went! Voila! The above pano is ready for editing in Photoshop!

I also uploaded other, non-pano, non-HDR photos to my Rural Decay in Tooele County set...

You can see them by clicking here: Rural Decay, June, 2011

Hope you enjoy! Thanks for stopping by!