In 2014, my wife and I visited a recreated western town near Apache Junction, Arizona. Goldfield was an active mining town that lasted only until the gold mines played out. The post office only lasted five years. The town, however, lives on in the form of a tourist attraction. This year, we had the opportunity to visit there again, this time armed with a better lens and camera set to capture HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs. Regular followers may recall that HDR is an image enhancement tool that takes advantage of multiple exposures to provide greater detail in the shadows and overbright areas. Oh, oh… looks like trouble is brewing on the streets of Goldfield. A couple of bounty hunters are looking for a gang of outlaws holed up here from a neighboring town. What’s up with all those people standing around? Don’t they know there could be gunplay?

Back to my discussion of HDR. It is easy to “over-process” an HDR image, leaving the result grainy. Some prefer the artistic look of a highly processed HDR image. Me? Not so much. What I prefer about HDR is the technique’s ability to bring out detail in the shadows. In the image above, people standing in the shade of the chapel entry are properly exposed as well as the people standing in the bright sunlight. This trick is accomplished by setting the camera to capture three exposures, one each exposed for dark areas, light areas, and the correctly exposed image for the entire photograph. I included the above photograph because it also shows an unpleasant artifact of HDR processing. If there happens to be motion in the photographs, the three images may register that motion in different parts of the image. When that happens, further processing is needed. In the example above, note the person walking just out of the photo on the left. I used Lightroom to process the three images into HDR. As you can see, it had trouble processing the walker, creating a ghost-like multiple exposure. Lightroom has the ability to deghost, which I selected for processing, but as you can see by this image, it sometimes needs Photoshop, in this case to “fix” the walker, maybe to the point of removing her completely.

This image is the properly exposed image prior to HDR blending with the other two images. Note how dark it is under the church entryway. Compare that to the HDR image above to see the improvement. But enough about HDR. Back to Goldfield. A small chapel serves the spiritual needs of the community and is available for weddings and other appropriate ceremonies. The gallery of images below features a small selection of HDR captures processed in Lightroom. Click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery. More images and a lot more detail about Goldfield can be found here.

Goldfield Ghost Town, AZ

Between the Superstition and Goldfield Mountains, a mining town was born in the early 1890s with the discovery of high grade gold ore. Goldfield grew quickly to a population of 1,500 residents. However the mines played out and the post office lasted only five years. By 1898, Goldfield was a ghost town. Only the diehard prospectors looking for the legendary Lost Dutchman mine remained. With new technology, the town had a rebirth of sorts when the mine reopened. By 1926, however, the gold vein was fully mined and the “play” was exhausted.

The newly reborn “Youngsburg,” named after George Young, the entrepreneur who deployed the new technologies, again lasted only five years. With the closing of the Post Office, the town was officially back in ghost town status. I submit for your visual evaluation a gallery of photos taken on a cloudy day in the recreated town known as Goldfield Ghost Town.

In 1966, Robert F. Schoose, a ghost town enthusiast, moved into the area and discovered Goldfield. It’s through his vision and hard work that Goldfield is open again. This time, its incarnation is a tourist destination. The streets are populated with period buildings including shops, a brothel, bakery, jail and more. Actors in period costumes wander the streets and on weekends, you can expect a “gunfight” to erupt sometime during your visit. You can even tour a replica mine. Spend a few minutes with us in Goldfield Ghost Town, east of Phoenix in Apache Junction, Arizona.

To view the gallery, click on one of the images below for an enlarged image with navigation arrows that allow you to view the gallery.

The historical information about Goldfield was gleaned from the ghost town’s website.

John Steiner