Standing in the left-turn lane

Sonora, California has been one of my favorite places to shoot at night in the summer. The weather can be a perfect 75 even at 2am in the morning, there are countless older buildings and alleyways to explore, and the local drunks on weekday night are some of the friendliest there are! No sarcasm there either. Pretty much every person we encountered acted like we were their long lost best friend.

None of the places I intended to photograph made the cut. Either the lighting was non-existent, there were shiny new cars parked in the way, or the place just creeped my friend Bear and I out a little too much to stick around long enough to get a good shot. Exposures at night can take a lot of time and often need multiple shots to get it just right, and when it feels like there is something standing in the alleyway next to you staring you down, you move on quickly. I'm not saying Sonora is haunted for sure, but it is an old Gold Rush town with a very boisterous and animated history. I'll let you make the judgement call from there.

There was one building that as we walked past caught my eye. It had great detail and beautiful reds and greens that I was certain I could capture. Painted colors on buildings at night can be tough to capture since everything tends to take on the color of the light. I wanted... no NEEDED, to shoot this building! One problem. A big problem, even at 2am on a balmy summer weekday night. The building was at a three way intersection. On a highway. To shoot the building straight on as was my goal, I would need to stand in the left hand turn lane of Highway 49 as it merged onto the main road going through historic Sonora. I set the camera up as best I could, looked each direction and told Bear to keep a look out, and ran into the middle of the road with my camera and tripod. I didn't even look through the viewfinder, just set the exposure immediately and kept vigil on the roads around me for traffic. A couple of times thinking a car was coming my way, I ended the exposure and ran to the sidewalk. I shouldn't say run. I don't run. It was more like flailing like a duck with a bad wing and a soda ring around their foot. I'm not graceful at high speeds. This I am sure appeared comically delicious to the few onlookers sitting on the half wall by the motel a block down. I'm absolutely certain the local patrol officer who we had seen half a dozen times already that evening made that turn away from us with a big "nope!" going through his mind. I don't blame him. I hope he laughed at least. In the end I didn't quite get the shot I wanted for the series, but I did get a shot I liked. The shot I wanted I estimate I would have needed a good five minutes without traffic and no risk of having the poor police officer have to stop and have the "you realize you're standing in the left hand turn lane on a state highway" conversation.

Taken quite unapologetically from the left hand turn lane on Highway 49 going through Sonora and towards Columbia. Don't try this at home! Or anywhere else...

Jumping a Ravine

A couple years ago on the way back from an adventure down a forest service road meant for a four wheeler and not my highway commuter compact in search of a non-existent road sign, my friend Bear and I spotted an abandoned gas station along the mountain highway that just begged for a closer look. We get out and survey the situation. Old awning over where the pumps would have been with a lone Manzanita growing beneath it with other scrub. A large pit filled with water that I can only surmise was where the tanks once were, a parking lot covered in dirt and a dozen or more 9ft+ Ponderosa, and the building itself not looking too shabby other than the glass on the door being busted out. Getting to it however...

That looked very deep!

The few places we had stopped in town, no one could quite remember how long it had been abandoned, but it was very clear why. This town boomed during the gold rush, and thousands of shallow mines were dug under the entire town, except apparently the old Wells Fargo building. Rumor says they would have shot anyone they caught trying it. I believe it. Eventually all those shallow mines collapse, and surrounding this abandoned gas station were small ravines, averaging 10-12ft deep, and of varying widths across. The building and lot were literally surrounded on all sides. We had to be very careful too, as vegetation obscured some of these. With a little persistence however, we found a relatively shallow area and only a single jump across... into a tree. It was easier for Bear, being far taller than myself. I was less than graceful, but unscathed.

Not the ravine we crossed...

Walking around to the front of the building we found it easy to access the inside, but despite being the middle of a spring afternoon we both hesitated. Not often you find a building abandoned long enough to have a couple feet of dirt covering its lot along with a small forest starting that doesn't have graffiti outside the building or smell like human waste. It didn't FEEL right. And we went inside anyway. Inside was a little musty, torn up, and there was graffiti inside... which somehow made us feel better? I'm not quite sure why but it did. Now past the initial nervousness we took stock of the scene. Abandoned refrigeration units. Piles of floor tile in boxes. Insulation dropped from the ceiling. Bits of one way glass scattered about from what we hope was the managers office and not into a bathroom.

Inside the abandoned gas station. I didn't wander too far in as flip flops are not good exploration shoes.

Considering the low light in the building and leaving my tripod in the car, I was very happy to capture this image and then get our butts out of there before someone called highway patrol on my car being 'abandoned' a few hundred yards away. Retrospect I should have been more worried about a trespassing citation than a parking ticket, but obviously not worried enough to go back again a few weeks later!