Travelog: White Caps Mine (Nye county) Nevada

[Asher Kelman]

This was the next to last place we photographed. From the town's website, "Manhattan was a boom-town twice ; first in the 1860's and then, again, from 1906 through around 1948. It is still one of the best old mining towns to visit in Nevada, with plenty of action going on, especially at the two bars after the sun goes down." Since 1906, the mines produced over $45 million in gold and many other minerals.

The town is still inhabited but most of the building have long since returned and made peace with the earth. What we didn't see and what has disappeared comes from a picture taken in 1915

White Caps Mine , Manhattan, Nevada, Circa 1915

Public Domain, Photographer not recorded

Asher Kelman May 2011: Whitecaps Mine: Furnace from above, looking down from the Hill behind the Mine

Canon 5D II 24mm TSE handheld, stitched in Photoshop
​

Today, it's the old Evans-Kleptetko modification of the McDougal Roasting furnace, now rusted that dominates the landscape.

This little jewel is hidden away in the hills east of Manhattan, NV. It's notable for its many buildings still standing, and it's giant furnace dominating the landscape. One of the buildings is losing its fight with gravity, and it's only a matter of time before it falls over. Beware the giant open shaft covered with logs near the roasting furnace; some say it goes all the way down to the 1500' level. You'd probably starve to death before you hit bottom. There is also the remains of a house perched on on the hill overlooking the site. Buildings are empty, but there is a lot to see.

And in case you're wondering about this roasting furnace, it's a "wedge furnace," described thus:

The Evans-Klepetko modification of the McDougall Roasting Furnace is the furnace employed at the Washoe and Great Falls Works of the Anaconda Company, and at many other important smelters. It consists of a cylindrical vertical shell of f-inch steel, lined with 8 or 9-inch bricks, with six hearths provided with openings alternately at the centre and periphery, through which the ore is rabbled from hearth to hearth, and finally discharged. A vertical hollow shoft to which six arms, which are also hollow, carrying the ploughs are attached, passes through the centre of the furnace. The ploughs are so set that they stir and push the ore towards the opening near the middle of the first hearth to the six openings at the periphery of the next, and so on alternately to the bottom, where the ore falls through a hopper into a truck or a bin below. The shaft arms are cooled by water circulating through them.

In the Herreshoff furnace the shaft and arms are cooled by air under pressure (see figure 15), otherwise it is similar in construction to the Evans-Klepetko.

The Wedge Furnace resembles generally the two furnaces just described, but the revolving central shaft is 4 feet in diameter. This shaft is protected from the heat by an external covering of brick, which revolves with it, and is said never to be too hot inside for workmen to enter and unbolt any of the arms. The shaft with its arms is entirely supported by six heavy roller bearings beneath the furnace, and is revolved by means of bevel gearing. It and the arms are cooled by air forced in by a fan or other means.

-The Metallurgy of The Non-Ferrous Metals - Griffin's Metallurgical Series - William Gowland, F.R.S., A.R.S.M. 1914.
Source

Asher

 

[Jim Galli]

Here are a couple of panos done in 2009

superintendents house, white caps mine

white caps mine​

A few days after the workshop I was talking to a long time Manhattan resident asking him if anyone noticed a large group up at the mine. He just laughed and said, don't lick your fingers - that's arsenic up there that they used.

 

[Ron Morse]

I love this sort of thing. Exploring and photographing old pieces of history.

You all must have enjoyed yourselves so much. It must have been a learning experience also.

 

[Jim Galli]

also posted at LFForum​

OK, I plan to get serious about the scanning today, so will be posting some.

window, white caps mine office, manhattan, nv​

This is the only image I did at the White Caps mine in Manhattan. Eddie was giving our friend Glen an excellent basic lesson in Large Fromat 4X5 camera movements sharing his Chamonix with Glen. I thought I would expand it a bit and a bunch of the other folks joined in.

I knew this shot would not make my name a household word, but it did offer several problems to solve and a good teaching platform.

The first problem was an equipment one. I didn't have a sharp wide angle with me, and I didn't have a flash, or sync. Ask for help! Asher Kelman came to the rescue with a beautiful 240mm Docter Optik wide field lens in Copal 1 shutter. Al Olson had a Vivitar 285 flash, but no sync cord. Steve Lumry had a nice little Leica flash with an adapter cord. I used all 3 items on the Eastman 7X11

The photo has a bunch of technical problems to solve one at a time which allows a good chance for instruction. The first that comes to mind is the gigantic range of light to capture some how from direct sunlight outside, to a cave inside. The interior walls had been long ago coated with soot from a fire. Try to imagine the light readings from a soot covered wall in non-open shade inside and direct sunlight outside. 12 - 14 stops perhaps? We would hopefully solve that by popping 2 flashes inside during the exposure for outside. We actually did meter both situations but I didn't write it down. Trust me it was huge.

Next is focus. We can swing the back on the eastman to get the wall perfect everywhere and ensure that all of our verticals on the camera are plumb. Then we focus outside, put a fingernail at that place on the base, roll the standard forward for best inside focus, and look down at the distance. Ouch! Almost an inch. The best you can do is place the rear standard exactly half way between the near and far, and stop down. F64 1/2 is the only solution. It's the best trade off between getting absolutely nothing because of diffraction, and getting enough resolution everywhere for a usable image.

The exposure is 1/2 second f64 1/2. One flash is synced to the shutter, and the other will be popped by Eddie during the 1/2 second. Easily done, but we didn't calculate how much help the 2 flashes would provide at f64 1/2. That we just leave to hopefulness, and as you can see, it worked fine.

 

[Jim Galli]

A couple more thoughts for this forum. I'm reading your minds. Why not just use HDR?? Because I'm a dinosaur, that's why. Second, that board that divides the window? You'd have to have been there. If I pulled that board off, the entire 2 story house built on a cliff side might have collapsed with us in it! It was that rickety :~'))

 

[Asher Kelman]

A couple more thoughts for this forum. I'm reading your minds. Why not just use HDR?? Because I'm a dinosaur, that's why. Second, that board that divides the window? You'd have to have been there. If I pulled that board off, the entire 2 story house built on a cliff side might have collapsed with us in it! It was that rickety :~'))

Jim,

Pros are like movie heros that turn on a dime when disaster hits and solve impossible problems. The guys at NAASA bringing back a crippled spacecraft from the moon, a surgeon faced with a stab victim bleeding from the heart, a sliced kidney, inferior vena cava and then a humble wedding photographer moved indoors in unexpected rain where he has no lighting and 600 refugee guests crammed in a small dim hotel.

What you did here is the same. We call on our ingenuity and then on our instinct and n the end jus pray.

Likely there will be few more opportunities for anyone to repeat that shot! What's satisfying is the mustering of resources that we are capable of doing when pushed to the edge.

Some like you, push yourself and that is impressive!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Gateway of Ruins

There was a wooden structure stood against the sky, like a gateway defying the passage of time. The photograph is taken with a a Super Symmar XL 150 mm on the Chamonix 8x10 using Kodak Portra NC and then scanned with my freebie all-in-one Canon printer-scanner from a color print to show you this right away.

Asher Kelman: Gateway at White Caps

Color​

However, I feel that the bright colors distract from the form and this is no beach. It's a ruined place. So I reassigned the colors to tonalities and here it is in B&W.

Asher Kelman: Gateway at White Caps

B&W Derivative​

Feedback critique and your own pictures of White Caps mine welcome too!


Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Next time I have to try repeating such pictures with Tri-X or HP-4 and see the differences in how colors are assigned to tones.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

I prefer the B&W. As you said, colors only distract from the subject. I think you could go even further down that route by standing closer to the gate. The route, most of the pile of rubble, the trees also are external to the subject and somewhat distract from it. So they could be removed, like the colors. You would then keep just the sky, the gate and a tiny bit of context, to define "a gateway defying the passage of time".

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

I actually prefer the colour, perhaps it's the heavy contrast of the B&W rendition.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I prefer the B&W. As you said, colors only distract from the subject. I think you could go even further down that route by standing closer to the gate. The route, most of the pile of rubble, the trees also are external to the subject and somewhat distract from it. So they could be removed, like the colors. You would then keep just the sky, the gate and a tiny bit of context, to define "a gateway defying the passage of time".

Jerome,

Thats correct. We could do without most of the foreground. Of course, we lose the bright tract of stones leading upwards which is itself an effective feature. Still, without all that, it's indeed impressive. However, I wanted to first show the entire image, as it was taken with 8"x10", not 4"x10" piece of film.

This could have been shot with a longer lens. The 150 mm I used corresponds to about 20 mm in 35mm format, so it's ultrawide. I had lent my 240 mm lens to Jim Galli for his shot above with flash indoors.


Asher

 

[Ron Morse]

I actually prefer the colour, perhaps it's the heavy contrast of the B&W rendition.

I agree with Ben.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I agree with Ben.

Ron and Ben,

Thanks for that feedback. Preferring the color is hardly surprising.

It might well be that the colors are more upbeat and then the gateway one just notices in passing and one has a happy day. The B&W from Ben's Jerusalem, Yemin Moshe series is more gradually toned and subtle. These B&W pictures have great dignity and although the record the passage of centuries, they show mans resilience and ability to treasure communities despite hardship..

My B&W, here, however, is far more somber and if one has a choice in life, one prefers not to look on the harsher side of reality hidden from us. I wanted to show the more brittle B&W form as it represents the harsh reality of our often perfunctory effect on the world. I really was depressed by the brutal neglect of the company to the land and then the equally stern response by mother nature!

Asher

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

It's not the subject matter, the B&W rendition just doesn't work compositionally for me. The eye is led up from the middle at the bottom through to the middle of the top and doesn't touch the sides at any point.

 

[Jerome Marot]

This could have been shot with a longer lens.

I did not suggest that, or I would simply have suggested a crop. I suggested moving closer to the subject. You want to keep the dramatic effect of the short focal length perspective.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I did not suggest that, or I would simply have suggested a crop. I suggested moving closer to the subject. You want to keep the dramatic effect of the short focal length perspective.

Great idea, Jerome,

That will be next year, hopefully.

Asher

 

[Mark Hampton]

There was a wooden structure stood against the sky, like a gateway defying the passage of time. The photograph is taken with a a Super Symmar XL 150 mm on the Chamonix 8x10 using Kodak Portra NC and then scanned with my freebie all-in-one Canon printer-scanner from a color print to show you this right away.

Asher Kelman: Gateway at White Caps

Color​

However, I feel that the bright colors distract from the form and this is no beach. It's a ruined place. So I reassigned the colors to tonalities and here it is in B&W.

Asher Kelman: Gateway at White Caps

B&W Derivative​

Feedback critique and your own pictures of White Caps mine welcome too!


Asher

Asher,

i enjoy the work that Jim and you have done... I have a quote from Stephen Shore.

"Color film is wonderful because it shows not only the intensity but the color of light. There is so much variation in light between noon one day and the next, between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. A picture happens when something inside connects, an experience that changes as the photographer does. When the picture is there, I set out the 8x10 camera, walk around it, get behind it, put the hood over my head, perhaps move it over a foot, walk in front, fiddle with the lens, the aperture, the shutter speed. I enjoy the camera. Beyond that it is difficult to explain the process of photographing except by analogy:

The trout streams where I flyfish are cold and clear and rich in the minerals that promote the growth of stream life. As I wade a stream I think wordlessly of where to cast the fly. Sometimes a difference of inches is the difference between catching a fish and not. When the fly I've cast is on the water my attention is riveted to it. I've found through experience that whenever--or so it seems--my attention wanders or I look away then surely a fish will rise to the fly and I will be too late setting the hook. I watch the fly calmly and attentively so that when the fish strikes--I strike. Then the line tightens, the playing of the fish begins, and time stands still. Fishing, like photography, is an art that calls forth intelligence, concentration, and delicacy.

Stephen Shore, 1982 "

it seems applicable here... I have no quibble about b/w colour / cropping ... what you have presented just needs more ... more images of this quality...

thanks for giving me something to gaze upon.

cheers

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Asher,

There was a wooden structure stood against the sky, like a gateway defying the passage of time. The photograph is taken with a a Super Symmar XL 150 mm on the Chamonix 8x10 using Kodak Portra NC and then scanned with my freebie all-in-one Canon printer-scanner from a color print to show you this right away.

Nice shot, and both renderings are very nice. The mapping of colors onto grayscale values gives a very effective result.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Jim Galli]

The color shot did nothing for me but the black and white immediately revealed the face of a phantom escaping for perhaps a night raid from his earthly prison.

 

[Asher Kelman]

The color shot did nothing for me but the black and white immediately revealed the face of a phantom escaping for perhaps a night raid from his earthly prison.

Thanks, Jim,

I just found your remark and agree. But for sure, there must be a means of bringing out that drama, even in color!

Asher

 

[Roshni Patel]

Colored Image over B/W