When a slightly eccentric couple started collecting historic buildings from several counties and put them together into an artificial city within a city, they had no idea that their work would become Bodfish’s number one attraction.
Bodfish?
Bodfish is a small unassuming city near Lake Isabella, at the southern corner of the Sierra Nevada.
Silver City is an arbitrary compilation of buildings from old mining cities, lovingly put together to a new city. Main Street is full of attractive details, antiques, and capably arranged displays of relics, gathered from numerous locations. Some displays, like the inside of the saloon, are excessive but if you pay attention to what you frame, you can create compelling photographs.
The owners claim that the town is haunted. As proof, they offer a collection of photographs, showing orbs, which are actually common artifacts of small camera flash photography in dusty rooms. Visitors can find many spooky looking items and metal objects hung to jingle at the slightest breeze.
A definite fact is that I enjoyed the visit and had a wonderful time photographing this location with its countless antique items.
How to get there
Highway 178 near Lake Isabella
Silver City is located in Bodfish, just south of the city of Lake Isabella.
Take the Elizabeth Norris Road exit from Highway 178. Turn right on Lake Isabella Road and drive for about 0.9 miles.
GPS position
How to photograph Silver City
Skull
Due to the overabundance of items, the main challenge is to isolate charming, spooky, or otherwise interesting details from the clutter. The place is not very large. Scenic photography is not the main attraction. Take some time to read the signs or go inside the open buildings. Even though the curators arranged everything artificially, all of the buildings and many of the items are authentic. The buildings appear tiny as if they belong to an amusement park. They are crooked and sometimes look just plain comical. The hotel and the bank, located next to each other, stand out the most.
Use a CP filter for your outdoor shots. This will enhance the brilliant colors of some buildings and help you reduce reflections from windows. Use natural light inside the buildings to preserve the colors. Boost your ISO if necessary and use an image-stabilized lens. Your camera flash usually makes things look flat and dull.
Gallow in Silver City
Isolate your main subject from the clutter. I purposely underexposed the skull image slightly. This preserves the highlights better, while some of the other items around the skull vanish in darkness. I used the widest aperture to reduce depth of field in the picture of the rope, which helps to isolate it from the busy background. Other techniques for isolating subjects include the spacial distortion of wide-angle lenses, which make the foreground stand out, framing the subject to enhance its visual importance, and using tilt-and-shift lenses or the lensbabies lens.
Would you like to capture a few orbs to scare your fellow travelers or tell ghostly adventure stories at home?
All you need is a small camera, with the flash as close as possible to the lens. Stir up some dirt in a building and take random pictures of things, with the dirt flying around. For a detailed explanation, simply follow the wiki link below. Maybe the new wave of cell phones with flash will refuel our interest in ghost stories.
Even without ghosts, this little place is an exceptional deal and always worth the quick detour from CA-178.
Stream near Highway 178
CA-178 follows a small canyon, west of Lake Isabella. It has a number of scenic pullouts that overlook the river and the canyon. Late afternoon light can be exceptional, especially during the summer and fall.
Lake Isabella itself is very popular with weekend boaters and water-sport enthusiasts. I have not found many good photography options around the lake, but I suspect that late spring to early summer can offer decent wildflower displays. Some purple flowers still graced the canyon walls during my last summer run (image in “How to get here” section).
Best Time of the Day and Best Season
In summer, Silver City opens daily from 10am to 4pm. From November 1st to April 1st, the site opens only on weekends from 10am to 4pm.
The lower angel of the winter sun makes this my preferred time to visit locations with very restricted hours.
Time required
You need about 1 – 2 hours here. The site is very small, but many opportunities are waiting for you.
Equipment
- Zoom Lens
- Image Stabilization
- External Flash
Fees
Admission cost is $4 per person, $3 for children 12 and younger, and free for children 5 years or younger.
Close Locations
- Red Rock Canyon State Park
- Trona Pinnacles
- Alabama Hills
- Randsburg Ghost Town
- Darwin
- Darwin Falls
- Ballarat Ghost Town
- Harrisburg Ghost Town
- Skidoo Ghost Town
- Calico Ghost Town
- Sequoia National Forest
- Fort Tejon SHP
- California Poppy Reserve
- Kern County Oilfields
Useful Resources
- Silver City
- How to Photograph Orbs (Wikipedia)
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3 Comments
Quite an undertaking (no pun intended) to build Silver City. Strange the things people want to do. Interesting.
Thanks for visiting Silver City Ghost Town…great photos and good tips on how to take them. As for the “orbs”, people capture these anomalies virtually every day we are open. 90% of these photographic artifacts are captured in the Jail (in just two of the 8 corners in the two room building), the church and the saloon. If dust is responsible, I would think these anomalies would occur in all of the 21 buildings on site as these are no more dusty then the other structures. But that is not the case, the other buildings seldom if ever produce this phenomenon. But, most importantly if all you looked at was “orb” photos you might want to look again at the evidence going back some 50 years. Not only are there hundreds of luminosities photographed on site every year ( with flash and without, cheap cameras and the best) but there are many photos of standing full and partial body apparitions that have been photographed at Silver City Ghost Town. These include a little girl in Victorian apparel, a full standing apparition of what appears to be “Wormie” Annie Sullivan (a previous owner of the site), a very amazing blue entity and many more. A small sampling of these photographs and other evidence of paranormal activity was recently shown on “My Ghost Story” on Biography Channel (BioHD) and the show segment can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/silvercityghosttown Once a skeptic myself I have seen way too much evidence to believe that dust can make things fly around a room…check out the video and go to the website above for more evidence. We hope you will come again, and thanks for posting the tips on photographing Silver City. Sincerely, J. Paul Corlew Curator/Director of Silver City Ghost Town…PS take the Bodfish exit off 178 there is no Elizabeth Norris Road Exit. Thanks and see you again soon!
Thank you for your comment and for your opinion J. I appreciate you coming here and taking a stand for what you believe. I went to your link, but I couldn’t see the show you mentioned. I will dig a little more if I have time, or you could help me and my readers and post a direct link to your video.
I am a rational and scientific person. I do not believe in ghosts, and I believe that every photographic evidence of ghosts has a rational explanation. Nonetheless, I think ghost stories are fun and I do like to indulge in thought experiments (what if …).
You should invite the Ghost Hunters to your city and let them have a sweep. I am sure you will be pleased with their results and it will create a good buzz.
There are many reasons I can think of, why the Jail shows 90% of the phenomenons. For instance, I don’t remember many buildings open to public access, besides the jail. The light may be better in some corners of it, and the fascination of these ghost stories drives more people into the jail taking ghost pictures.
Maybe I need to spend a night in the Jail in order to become a convert. However, I see no rational reason that compels me to sleep there when I could stay in a comfy hotel room.