Saguaro Wanderings: Seeing 2012 (#71)

For your consideration: an homage to the (very) distant past days of my youth when I lived in Clifton, Arizona, and had virtually complete (and hazardous) access to large expanses of abandoned mining operations acreage . . . Indeed, it was during that very era (1974-76) when I set up my first home darkroom, and spent countless blissful hours exploring wonderfully decrepit, rusting machinery and crumbling structures of all sizes.

Back then the equipment was a Minolta srT-102, 50mm f/1.8 and 135mm f/2.8 Rokkor lenses; the media was Kodak Tri-X Pan (ISO 400), Plus-X Pan (125) and, what was to become my love, Panatomic-X (32). I developed in Dektol (1:1) at first, then Microdol-X; my enlarger was a relatively cheap Vivitar model (bought in Safford, AZ) which leaked light galore yet produced stunningly crisp prints.

Things have changed some in the past forty years.

Last weekend Jerry and I, with our friend Vernon along for the adventure, made our long-anticipated second effort to traverse the entirety of the Panoche Valley route into the hills, with the goal of reaching an abandoned mining community. We set out at 7:00am, and (eating and photographing at various points along the way) finally succeeded in finding the rapidly decaying ruins of this remote hidden collection of shambles at about 2:30pm. Perhaps three hours were spent exploring the site, with much to see but (for me at least) not nearly so much as I'd hoped for in terms of compelling photogenic subjects.

The weather was unfortunately — and expectedly — blandly beautiful . . . thus utterly cloudless, boring skies and flat lighting for most of the day . . . Consequently I had to work much harder to "see". Tonight, after reviewing the several hundred images taken, I confess to be being somewhat disappointed, although I knew going in that the first visit's richness (last January) set the bar impossibly high to match this time. Still, a few images worthy of publication seem to come out of the effort.

And so this: literally at the pinnacle of my day's shooting, a self-portrait of sorts, standing atop a quite large, equally empty tank which provided a commanding view over most of the surrounding remnants of once thriving operations