Photo #6 – The Accidental Ghost Town

The Accidental Ghost Town - 1/250th - f/5.6 - ISO 50 - 24mm

Six hours into the trip  and we are heading up the I-Nothing towards absolutely nowhere. The clock is ticking and there is nothing but sagebrush and cactus  along the road. We are down to the wire on time and really want to stick to the plan. We are scanning the side of the road. The time runs out and we look for the next spot to pull over and shoot a big Saguaro cactus. We find a good spot, the cactus is decent but not exciting, and as we go to get out of the “HMS Gigantor” we look across the street and see this dilapidated set of buildings. We had got so wrapped up in only scanning one side of the road that we almost drove right by it.  This taught us a valuable lesson about paying attention and scanning the entire scenery.

Unfortunately there is a chain link fence surrounding the structures and while we could have shot through it at point blank range and it would basically disappear, we really wanted a clean view, although this meant getting fairly close. In order to capture the complete building from the short distance required a wider lens so we threw a 24-70 on the camera and pulled it back to 24mm. We were still at ISO 50 and f/5.6 would give us a decent depth of field  which left is with a 1/250th shutter speed. The fast shutter was needed since Chris was holding the camera over his head to avoid the fence and a fast shutter would help avoid camera shake.

Additional Information

Saguaro Cactus on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saguaro
Arizona Ghost Towns: http://www.arizona-leisure.com/ghost-towns.html