Mine Butte

So apparently the largest, or one of the largest, copper mines in the world is in Butte. Just an hour or so away from Bozeman. It supplied most the world with the copper it needed. Most of the world....or so I am told. It used the be a system of tunnels, hundreds of miles long. But they started filling in with water, so they just tore everything up and made it an open pit mine. Cue erosion.

Which makes really cool photos from a distance. Today, my photo class visited Butte to do architectural photo stuff with 4x5 cameras. Before we started off, we visited an overlook of the mine. From where we were, you could see this crazy patch of erosion. It looked basically like I was looking straight down on it or something, so it became this really cool texture patch.

I shot at f7.1, ISO100, and 1/500. Nothing special to report there.

I did try to get nothing but the hill side in the photo, and to put the biggest erosion line just off center, not in the middle. There's a reason the Rule of Thirds is a rule...

For editing, I cropped a bit to get rid of a tree, and then I converted to b/w. There's something about b/w that is really pleasing for textures. Especially when you then up the clarity and highlights. Make it super contrasty.

That's about all for this photo. It's not a terribly complicated one, but it is interesting all the same.

See you tomorrow!