Bannack Ghost Town

I took this photo, and made it into an HDR. (That's why the banner is at the bottom.)



On Wednesday I headed up to Bannack, Montana with my photo class (along with the other section of the class). It was an all-day affair. We left Rexburg at 8:30 a.m. and got back at 9:30 p.m. Bannack Ghost Town is about 2 1/2 hours away from Rexburg. It was really cool. The town was a bustling mining town in the 1860s. But, eventually everyone moved on. The last person left in the 1950s.

You can walk the town in a matter of minutes, but there are a lot of neat buildings to explore. Since my photo teacher has been going there for years (and is friends with the park rangers), we got special access to locked buildings. It was just really cool to see (and photograph) old things. One of the buildings was an old school house. The desks were still there.

Basically, we took pictures all day. We had several shots we were required to get- including a ghost shot. :) To do that, we had tripods. We had long shutter speeds and someone went in and out of the shot quickly. It was pretty cool. (Check my photo blog in the coming days to see that shot as well as more Bannack shots.)

I got a really bad sunburn on Wednesday- probably from being outside for many hours. Luckily it didn't hurt too bad.

All-in-all, it was a fun little excursion. Glad I got to miss class for it. :) P.S. Random fact- the park ranger guy said it is possibly the coldest place in the U.S. In the winter it can get as cold as -60 degrees! Yikes! (No wonder it's a ghost town now.)