Photographing the Historic Mining Stamp Mill
Historic sites are treasure for the outdoor photographers.
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Photographing the Historic Mining Stamp Mill
Are you a photographer who loves to photograph history like civil war sites, ghost towns, or old mine sites? Photographing old historic sites can be a lot of fun. These sites are often rich in history, telling the story of a bygone era and the people who lived and worked there. By photographing them, you can capture a piece of history and preserve it for future generations
I, like many photographers, love history and enjoy photographing these sites. So, for a number of years, my wife and would leave the frigid mountains of the Northwest and head for Arizona in January. We aimed for western Arizona and specifically Quartzsite, 20 miles east of the California border and there were several reasons we went there.
Kofa National Wildlife Refuge
First, the temperatures. In January, the average temperature is around 70 degrees and that allows us Northwesterners to walk around in shorts and flip flops. The second reason is the desert beauty. The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is gorgeous and that means photogenic landscapes. Arizona also has some of the most colorful sunsets and I photographed many.
Third, wide open spaces for many recreational opportunities and my favorite is simply hiking across a trailless desert. And fourth: cheap, cheap, cheap. You can find monthly RV full hookups for $200 a month or you can get a $40 permit ($180 yr) to camp in the desert for two weeks and use the dump stations, water fill-up, rest rooms, and dumpsters.
From there you can hike (possibly drive} to old mines, stamp mills, and crumbling stone cabins and photograph while also capturing glorious Saguaro cactus that are everywhere. There area is full of history as well.
Mining began as early as the 1860's and these are widely scattered across the regions mountain ranges. Since I like to hike as much as I can, I visited a site called the called the Halsey Williams Stamp Mill many times. It is located roughly a mile and a half from Quartzsite and the RV park and was an easy hike.
Wikipedia Commons, Date Unknown.
This mill was in the business of crushing ore from many local mines over the years and processed gold, silver, lead, and tungsten. The peak in the above picture is Q mountain and has the letter Q on the other side, which can be seen from the interstate. There are also more stamp mills and mines surrounding Q mountain.
Photography
On warm, sunny days, I loved to take a midday hike and wander around the Q mountain area. I would carry my camera and zoom lens along with some water and head off for some exercise and photography.
Zeroing in on the details, I photographed rust, gears, patterns and textures, and anything I thought created a nice composition and here are some examples.
This was a collapsed tank, possibly for water, that was tipped over and half crushed. In the background is Q mountain. What caught my eye and helped form this composition was the angles of the tank and Q mountain in the rear.
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A gear on the main part of the stamp mill. The composition here was the large gear wheel and the corroded metal in the rear.
This long tank is in the flats below the stamp mill. I used a wide angle lens to make it longer and chose to have the tank come out of a bottom corner and leading to the right side where there is a residential neighborhood. And the shiny tank ends up closely centered.
There is a lot going on in this scene, which I loved. Verticals, horizontals, and a center of attention where the gears, shaft, and wheels are in the middle.
I was captivated by the rust, texture, angles, and shadows from the sun. Simple and powerful.
This I believe is a dump bucket in the core of the stamp mill. It was full of patterns and textures, white stains, wood, and so much to show.
More remains of the stamp mill that really caught my eye, and specifically the concrete squares in the foreground.
This tank really caught my eye and it was the quote that made it stand out.
A nearby mine overlooks Quartzsite and I chose this angle since it was reasonably still standing.
Another view of the mine equipment emphasizing the collapsing structure.
Here is another perspective of the dump bucket centered to be the main subject.
While I photographed a lot of details, I also went for the bigger picture and here is the stamp mill and a large tank.
A nearby mine shaft closed the public.
You cannot go anywhere without capturing a Saguaro cactus and here I chose to shoot wide-angle looking up.
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Processing
To process the final images I used two B&W conversion technique which you can get greater information on how that technique works in this post. Then I also used B&W adjustment layers for greater detail in other images.
While some images were straight conversion processing, some were developed with more Photoshop efforts like burning and dodging.
After converting to B&W, I used Photoshops Quick Selection tool to select the tank in the foreground. Adding a Curves adjustment layer, I added a lot of contrast to make highlights go brighter, and shadows darker.
Then I selected the sky and used the Gradient Tool to draw a black and white gradient downwards in the sky. The last selection was Q mountain which went very dark from the first two adjustments layers, so I added another Curves adjustment layer and brightened the mountain.
After the B&W conversion, I added contrast to a flat light scene to bring out the punch. I next used the Lens Correction tool to straighten the verticals and horizontals. After some burning and dodging, I decided the area in the middle that has the shaft and gears had lighter tones than the left and right sides, so I dodged that some to make the center a bit brighter than the outside areas.
While this image had plenty of contrast, I wanted to bring out the textures by adding contrast. So I also used a Curves adjustment layer to add that punch and specifically pushed the shadows cast by the rivets to go closer to black. That effort added a lot of punch and drama.
The processing here took time and was involved. When I started, I first converted to B&W and then explored just want I wanted to do. I specifically chose this angle because of the square concrete forms in the foreground and I knew I wanted to emphasize those foreground features.
I added a Curves adjustment layer and darkened the image slightly and this darkened everything. I next selected the Quick Selection Tool and selected each of the square forms. Then with the selection active, I clicked another Curves adjustment layer and raised the linear line which brightened the square forms to look like they were painted.
Then, looking at the overall image and specifically how the first Curves layer darkened the whole image, I added another curves layer and selected the Medium Contrast in that Curves layer drop down menu. I then converted the mask to a Hide-all (black) mask.
Those steps were followed by selecting the Brush Tool and setting white as the foreground color, I then began to paint the dump bucket and 'disk' to brighten up the white streaks and also create separation in the black tones in the front of the bucker and left of it as well.
This allowed the white streaks on the dump bucket, the gear at the bottom of the bucket, and machinery and timbers to the left of the bucket, to have good contrast and detail.
Every other image was mostly straight B&W processing with minimal layers and burning and dodging.
That is an overview of processing these images to create the drama I like to create in my black and white images.
If you wish to explore the area, Quartzsite is two hours east of Palm Spring and just inside Arizona. It is one hour north of Yuma, and an hour and half south of Lake Havasu.
If you enjoyed this or have any questions or comments, please leave a comment Have fun out there and keep shooting.
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Love the contrast in these images.
Ahhhhh, these images are just my cup of tea! Love them all. (I admit, not only am I am fan of rusty metal and gears and bolts, etc, I am originally from Arizona so I also loved your image of all of the cacti you opened with.) Great editing as well. Nice post!