Snowy October Night Photography in Bodie

I've shot in Bodie at night nearly 40 times. The Bodie workshop season typically runs late May through mid-October when any storms tend to be convention-driven from daytime heat. So even on stormy days, the sky usually clears up at night. This time, in early October, a light storm not driven by daytime heat moved through, at first driving broken clouds to move through our shots of the Milky Way, then thickening to create trails of uneven clouds back-lit by green airglow.
 
The Milky Way was mostly out for the first hour, then coming and going with streaks of clouds for about an hour, then then the clouds were translucent with intermittent snow showers. The snow never stuck to the ground much, but it was cool to have streaking through our shots. Fortunately everyone else was really into it too It was chilly with the wind blowing, but every shot was different, so we worked fast, and right through the end, when we could barely get out on time!






One participant decided to leave in case the snow showers became more intense. His red brake lights were reflecting off of the low clouds above.

Mono County Tourism Scores Magazine Cover at 2015 Cannes Film Festival!

When the Mono County Economic Development, Tourism, and Film Commission wanted to put its best foot forward with a publisher designing a magazine for global film location scouts, they turned to Eastern Sierra photographer Jeff Sullivan.  A landscape photographer and guidebook author living at Topaz Lake, Jeff has led dozens of photography workshops for night photography at the local ghost town of Bodie, as well as landscape photography workshops in the broader Eastern Sierra region of California, especially in the Mono Lake to Tioga Pass to Mammoth Lakes area of Mono County.  

The publisher, Boutique Editions, liked forwarded samples of Jeff's work so much, they selected the Bodie image above for the cover of Location International 2015!  The magazine is launched each year at the Festival de Cannes in May.  The publicity enjoyed by Mono County continued from there:
"The magazine is distributed to 15,000 movie professionals worldwide, and is also available at Locations Trade Show in LA; Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity; Berlinale; MIPTV and MIPCOM; Sundance Film Festival, Utah and at AFM in Los Angeles." 


Producing stunning photos of locations is nothing new to Jeff.  He wrote a 320-page guidebook to the best photography locations in California from Mono County and Yosemite to San Diego: "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South".  Locations, and great photos of them, are exactly what he focuses on.  Using the proceeds from the sale of this book to fund the creation of in-depth regional guides, he's on a mission to help you discover "the best of the West"!


The popularity of photo sharing and social media sites in recent years had given him excellent opportunities to showcase his work.  Participating on Flickr since 2006, he is one of the most-followed photographers on this site popular with serious photographers, with over 45,000 contacts and an average of about 10,000 views per day.

Posting his images on the new Google+ social media site in 2011 as he worked on his guidebook earned him a Top 100 ranking on the site in the site's first two years, amassing nearly 2 million contacts.  At least one of the common beliefs about social media post success id true: competent photos really do give social media posts a huge boost!  This helped Jeff succeed with his photography workshop business, since a post's reception on Google+ has been determined by Internet marketing consultants to be the #1 factor in helping a site achieving favorable placement in Google searches.*

* It's puzzling that many organizations invest in maintaining social media activity, but don't pay more attention to the quality of the photography in their posts!  That's like entering an auto race at Laguna Seca Racetrack in a Honda Accord.  Unless you drive a track-ready Porsche, your family car has no business running with race cars.  Similarly, investing in online marketing activity but using consumer-quality photography will cause your investment in marketing on the Internet to under-perform against the competition as well.  If you're going to compete with the best in the world at anything, including getting your social media posts noticed with the lowest possible investment of time, put your best foot forward and don't skimp on high quality, eye-catching images! 

Mono County and Boutique Editions weren't the only organizations noticing Jeff's work in 2015.  A travel company in the U.K. noticed his work and named him a "Top 100 Travel Photographer in the World 2015".   Upon his book release in late 2015 he took a celebration lap of the Western U.S. and Canada, and one of his photos from Yellowstone National Park won an Outdoor Photographer Magazine "iPhone and Instagram" contest.

To see Jeff's work from 2015, both new images and reworked images from past years, see his blog: "Top 10 Favorite Travel and Landscape Images From 2015".

Late Fall Colors on Conway Summit

Sunset Rainbow at Topaz Lake

Rainbow Over Bodie's Standard Mill

Award-winning landscape photographer and astrophotographer Jeff Sullivan has been exploring the American West for four decades.  Honing his DSLR photography since he took a 35mm darkroom photography class in eighth grade, Jeff started his freelance photography business in 2006.  He has led dozens of photography workshops in Yosemite, Death Valley, the Eastern Sierra and the historic Wild West ghost town of Bodie, California.

Bodie Researched for Alton Towers Theme Park

This was a fun video to shoot. U.K. theme park Alton Towers decided to research an authentic mining town for an attraction they're opening this week. We spent one day up in Bodie capturing video, time-lapse footage, stills, interviews and sounds, and this was the result.

 I'd like to thank the California Film Commission for the quick turnaround on our film permit, Bodie State Historic Park / +California State Parks for supporting the research and production, and +Lori Hibbett for producing sunrise and night time-lapse footage of Bodie's iconic car on the shoot.

The day before the Alton Towers shoot in Bodie it was snowing on us 

For more information on accessing the historic buildings and town of Bodie, California, for photography or filming, contact Jeff Sullivan Photography, www,JeffSullivanPhotography.com.

Jeff also teaches night photography workshops in Bodie, and night and landscape photography workshops in Yosemite, Death Valley, and the Eastern Sierra.  His 2017 schedule will be released shortly.

This photo of Bodie by Jeff was featured on the cover of Locations International 2015, a directory of locations for film location scouts that was distributed at the Cannes Film Festival.

Bodie Night Photography Workshops 2016

It's time to kick off another year of night photography workshops in Bodie!  My June 27 workshop in Bodie is full.  The remaining  Bodie workshop dates are filling fast :

Saturday June 4 – night photography workshop: Milky Way, star trails, light painting, 6 pm - 1 am
Sunday June 5 - morning / interior access

June 27 - *FULL*

Friday, July 29 - night photography workshop: Milky Way, star trails, light painting, 6 pm - 1 am
(the night before the Saturday, July 30 Ghost Stories night).

Sunday August 28 – night photography workshop: Milky Way, star trails, light painting, 6 pm - 1 am (the night after after the Saturday, August 27 Ghost Stories night).

Saturday October 1 – morning / interior access
Saturday October 1 – night photography workshop: Milky Way, star trails, light painting, 6 pm - 1 am

We have four nights and two interior access sessions with space remaining.  Two of our Bodie nights are timed to be the night before or after a Bodie "Ghost Stories" night, when the park lets anyone stay until 10 pm with regular park admission.  That doesn't give visitors much more than sunset and twilight in the long days of summer, but it's still after-hours access, a perfect practice session before our August 28 workshop or following our July 29 workshop.The sun and stars move south to north over the course of the summer, and the Milky Way rises earlier and moves southeast to southwest from month to month.  This changes the compositions available. I've shot in Bodie at night multiple times in each month in recent years, so I have a lot of experience and composition knowledge to draw from in order to help you move efficiently around the park from shot to shot.

A discussion of the characteristics of the various dates appears on the Bodie workshop page on my new blog: http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/
Registration is there too: the workshops currently open for enrollment have the payment/registration linked to the price net to the description.

I'll place some examples below.  For a lot more, see nearly 400 of my Bodie photos in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/albums/72157630926160354

Hope you can join us!

www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

Exploring a Ghost Town at Night: May 24

Main Street Bodie under moonlit clouds

After our last sunrise and interior access session at the old mining ghost town of Bodie State Historic Park on Memorial Day Weekend, we headed out for lunch and rest before we'd return at 6 pm for sunset and night access.  The park isn't open at night, but we had an arrangement with the Bodie Foundation to provide funds for the park's preservation of buildings in "arrested decay", so they provided monitors to accompany us around town after hours.  

Rain showers were moving through the area throughout the afternoon, and we had varying degrees of cloud cover for our first two hours in the park. At 7 pm big, puffy clouds looked like they'd let some sunset light through about an hour later.

At 8 pm however, it started to rain.  Hard.  This was right when we should be out shooting sunset, but we had to take cover in a meeting room.  We watched an informative video on Bodie, but that wasn't what we were there for, so watched to see if the rain would subside.

Fortunately Bodie is located in a high desert ecosystem, and much of the 0.7 inch average precipitation for May falls in a storm or two, like the one the night before.  Other rain events are just a passing shower, and the cloud which had dumped on us had moved on by 9, and we went back out for amazing blue hour light.  The clouds were still moving fast, and they blurred in the sky as we set our cameras for 30 second exposures at Bodie's Methodist church, built in 1883.  There wasn't much light on the landscape, but a little light painting on the church helped that show up nicely. 

The moon was nearly a quarter moon, so as the clouds began to break up, it was backlighting them as the stars started to peek through.  We went to Bodie's classic, rusty 1937 Chevy and did some light painting to give it a little extra character in the moonlight.  People say that it may be the most photographed car in the world.  It is certainly the one that I have photographed the most!  The clouds started to break up as we were shooting the Chevy, so we decided to go see how conditions were after the rain down on Main Street.

We walked down Green Street to Main Street, and found that the puddles we had seen earlier in the day had been refreshed by the passing storm.  You don't find standing water in the high desert very often, and it doesn't last long, so we were lucky to have just followed a passing storm, twice now in the same day!

We captured a variety of buildings in various puddles, and the sky gradually cleared and showed more stars as the moon neared the horizon.  We moved to capture the green truck downtown, which I understand is a 1940 Ford commercial vehicle, before starting to head back towards our gear and our vehicles.  With the moon now out of the sky, many of the participants had time for one last shot of the Milky Way by the mining headframe up by the parking lot before we hit the road.

Having started the drive to Bodie at 3:30 am to get there by 5, I had some coffee at 10 pm to keep energized, but now I was too tired to sleep, so I just drove home, arriving around 2:30, 23 hours after I had left.  

It was a long day, but we enjoyed two of the best and most interesting special access sessions that I've experienced, in the 20+ that we've arranged over the past 4 years.  They just keep getting better the more we do it.  I can't wait for the four more dates we have scheduled in Bodie from June through October this year!

I didn't have room to include all of the photos that I wanted to show you in this blog post, so I'll be publishing more via DripThat, a new app and community which facilitates the telling of stories through pictures, video and text.  You can find the DripThat app in the Apple App Store (http://bit.ly/1dhaequ), and you can connect with me in the community to see more of my photos from my road trips: https://dripthat.com/pr?id=jeffsullivan

Shooting Bodie's Wheaton & Hollis Hotel and reflection

This information is on behalf of dripthat.

Exploring Ghost Town Interiors, Bodie May 24

Morning after the storm in Bodie

We had a great schedule planned for our photography workshop in the historic mining town of Bodie on Sunday, May 24.  It had been raining the day and night before, so would the weather cooperate?  The weather forecast predicted a 30% chance of rain for the day, and it was mostly cloudy when we arrived at 5:15 am, but there were signs that the cloud cover may break up.


When we arrived on Main Street we were pleasantly surprised to find puddles of water in the street.  The sun didn't break through the clouds enough at sunrise to paint the clouds shades of orange, but there were plenty of unique shots to be found thanks to the prior night's storm.  Gradually we started to see patches of blue sky peeking through the clouds

We visited the popular buildings like the Lottie Johl House, which has lots of furniture inside.  It's amazing that so much has survived from the town's past: couches, tables, chairs, beds, a gun rack, a cast iron stove, even silverware.  There are appliances such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and radios, and personal items too, like clothing and toys.  

Our monitors from the Bodie Foundation, Norm and Dave, offered to show us around the Standard Mill, where the gold ore was chushed, and naturally we accepted.  Gold ore entered on rails at the top of the mill.  Electric motors turned wheels and belts to drive camshafts which raised and dripped heavy stamps to crush the ore.  From the now-powdered rock, gold would get trapped in mats on tilted tables, much like a sluice box.  The Standard Mill was originally steam powered, and we saw the old boilers underneath the rest of the building.

During the course of the morning I lost track of how many buildings we explored, but it was close to 20.  I captured dozens of photos, more than I can comfortably fit in blog posts, so I'm trying out a new app DripThat, which lets me publish photos over time.  The DripThat app is available on the Apple App Store, and you can connect with me there as well to see more from this trip to Bodie: http://dripthat.com/profile/jeffsullivan

See more of my photos on DripThat: https://dripthat.com/pr?id=jeffsullivan

This information is on behalf of dripthat.

A Photo Workshop Day and Night in Bodie

Pre-dawn light at the bullwheel

First light on Main Street

The California Gold Rush was started by the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848.  In 1959 W. S. Bodey discovered gold east of the Sierra Nevada, and the rest is history.  Fortunately we can explore that history due to local families preserving the town until it became Bodie State Historic Park in 1962.  This authentic Wild West ghost town town is preserved in a state of "arrested decay", and the interiors of the buildings have been left largely untouched for over 50 years.

So what's a photography workshop in Bodie like?  Let's go through the approximate schedule for this coming Sunday.  This will be our first one where doing interiors in the morning and night access that same night, so we'll give everyone a card-clearing, battery charging siesta from roughly 1-4 pm.

The temperature is forecast to be 35 when we arrive, with:
"A slight chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 11am. Partly sunny, with a high near 53. North wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%."

4:45 am - Turn up Bodie Road where it meets Hwy 395.  Don't be late (watch for deer).

5:15 am sharp - Meet at gate, south end of town. Sunset sky color may be underway!

5:39 am - theoretical sunrise time in Bodie (zero degree horizon).

We'll start to enter buildings as soon as it's light enough: Boone General Store, Wheaton & Hollis Hotel, Sam Leon Bar & barber shop, Lottie Johl House, morgue, shoolhouse, Dechambau Hotel, IOOF Hall, and various residences as time permits.  Our record so far is 14 buildings.  Sample interior photos.

6:00 am - sunlight gradually reaches the buildings as the sun bathes them with golden hour light.  Divide your time in and out of buildings.

6:40 am - end of the best golden hour light.

9:00 am - the public enters the park.

11:52 am - moonrise, 41% full (we won't see it for another 20 minutes).

12:00 noon - end of interior access.

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Virginia Creek Settlement

12:12 pm - 41% crescent moon becomes visible over Bodie Bluff from town (approximate time).  Look for it to the left / north of the Standard Mill from the headframe by the parking lot.

1 - 4 pm - take a break, take a nap, get off your feet to rest for the night session!

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4:30 - 5:30 pm - optional dinner  at Virginia Creek Settlement restaurant, just north of Bodie Road, to discuss your experience, goals, gear, techniques.

Bring a waterproof layer with you back to Bodie, just in case:
"A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 11pm. Partly cloudy, with a low around 38. North wind 5 to 10 mph."
With 10 MPH winds, 38 would feel like 28, so bring a warm hat and gloves!

5:30 pm - turn up Bodie Road where it meets Hwy 395.

6:00 pm - meet at front gate, then we'll park, move gear to a meeting room, have a quick safety talk, then go shoot.  Sample Bodie night photos.

7:00 pm - the golden hour light will only get better until it leaves town around 7:45.

7:45 pm - approximate last direct sunlight in town.

8:07 pm - sunset time in Bodie (zero degree horizon).

8:27 pm - best sunset sky color in Bodie, give or take a few minutes

Enjoy blue hour light until 9:10 or so.  If some of the clouds stick around from the afternoon, blue hour may be spectacular.

Late blue hour with moonlight

9:10 pm - blue hour ends, switch to night lens / clothing, get lights, snacks, hydrate.

9:58 pm - end of astronomical twilight, sky fully dark

Shoot star trails, light painting, night panoramas, Camelopardalid meteor shower (weak).

Comet Lovejoy will be near the North Star Polaris on this night, so we might not need star-tracking mounts to catch a shot of it with a long lens!  The sky hasn't been clear this week for me to see how bright (or dim) it is, but we'll know where to find it quickly.

Iridium flare

10:25:31 pm  Iridium flare - 272 degrees (west) , 11 degrees elevation, we'll see a flash as the Iridium satellite #70 passes.

12:54 am - moonlight leaves town (approximate) as moon dips below hills.

1:00 am exit park (watch for deer on the drive out).

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1:14 am theoretical moon set time in Bodie (zero degree horizon).  (The Milky Way will become more visible, but if you want a parting shot, you'll have to catch it from outside of the park land.)

It's going to be a long day, but we should have a lot of great photographic opportunities!

Light Painting in Bodie in the moonlight.

More information on our Bodie workshops... dates and prices: http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/

Registration Opens for May 24 Bodie Night or Interior Workshops

Light painting in Bodie with partial monlight

Our first of five special access workshops in Bodie State Historic Park in 2015 is coming up in only 5 weeks!

We open registration for our Bodie workshops bundled with both night photography instruction and morning interior access first, since we'd hate to turn away anyone who want wants both simply because one or the other filled up.  Not everyone wants both however, so as space permits we sometimes are able to offer separate registration for the morning or evening session separately.

So if you'd like interior or night access to Bodie at a lower cost than both together, you can join us on May 24 as follows:

     May 24 interior access (approximately 5:30 am - noon) $245: 

     https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=RCQZ356GBZU2N

     May 24 night photography workshop only (approximately 6 pm - 1 am) $325: 
     https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=D34XKVKWDQNAJ


For more details on the workshops, including frequently asked questions on our workshops, visit this page on my Web site:

     Bodie Night Photography Workshops     
     http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/

Wheaton & Hollis Hotel

On May 24 the moon will set around 1 am as we're leaving the park, and it will be roughly a "first quarter" moon, 50% full.  This will be good for capturing the town well lit at night, bur it's not so bright that we can't add light of our own as well.  In addition to the lights I've been using for years, I recently bought a ProtoMachines LED2 for its range of colors as well as its fine control over intensity.  I've already taken it out for a week in March, and I'll be out practicing with it more in April and May as well.  For more examples of what Bodie is like with moonlight, here's an album on Flickr showing some past visits:

     Bodie Under Moonlight
     https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157646890561079/

Inside the Lottie Johl House

For interior access we enter as many buildings as we have time for.  On our last workshop in 2014, the ten photographers with us worked fast and entered 14 buildings!  I've found over the past few years that a tripod can be handy for the darkest rooms where I might want to use long exposures and/or exposure bracketing, but I like the fine composition control of shooting with the camera in hand.  To further extend the handheld concept, I can hold my iPhone in places and ways that would not be practical with a heavy DSLR, so some of my favorite shots now come from those low or creative angles.  You can see 100+ examples of Bodie interiors in an album here:

     Bodie Interiors 
     https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157634013024369/

Sunset in Bodie during a night photography workshop

Of course golden hour, sunrises and sunsets are not to be missed, so a general album of roughly 300 photos from the park is worth browsing as well:

     Bodie State Historic Park

It's difficult to say whether we'll be able to open up separate registration for other nights or interior sessions in 2015, it all depends upon how registration goes as the dates approach.  But I can say that May 24 is the only moonlit night we'll be in Bodie this year.  Most of the other night we have booked are on moonlit nights, so we can make the most of the Milky Way.

One tradeoff between the moonless and moonlit nights is that star trail shots may arguably be better with some moonlight, so the sky isn't completely filled with the vortex of stars.

Now in our fourth season, we're averaging 5 night workshops and 3 interior access workshops per year in Bodie. We've experienced multiple workshops in every month from May through October, with the moon in various phases and compass directions.  We'll help you make the most out of your time in Bodie!

If you're interested in both the night and interior workshops together on May 24 with a small price break, or one of our other dates in 2015, visit our main Bodie Photography Workshops page for information and to register.