Rhyolite under the starry Milky Way. Rhyolite is one of the best known ghost towns in the West, founded in 1904, and at one point having a population of 10,000. This evening, I was excitedly testing a new lens, an Irix 15mm f/2.4, which seems quite good so far. I illuminated the former Cook Bank building with a hand-held LED flashlight during the 15 second exposure.
The Car Forest is an art installation outside Goldfield, Nevada. I drove up from Beatty to photograph here on a gorgeous evening, surrounded by braying and sometimes galloping burros. Many of these cars were repainted since my last visit, some for the better, and some by idiots.
Photographing the abandoned and apparently haunted penitentiary at night was creepy, interesting, exciting, and sometimes challenging. The penitentiary has imposing Gothic stone architecture adorned with turrets and like a castle, and has an extremely violent history, with almost a thousand deaths within these stone walls. Photos were created with only a handheld flashlight in total or near total darkness. Tim Little and Mike Cooper also photographed here the same evening. The former West Virginia State Penitentiary, a National Historic Places Registered facility, operated by the Moundsville Economic Development Council in Moundsville, West Virginia, was built in 1866, just three years after West Virginia seceded from Virginia, and closed in 1995.
