Dgwphotos

Franklin is a ghost town just east of Black Diamond, WA, built to mine coal in the Green River Gorge. The town was abandoned in the 1920's, and only foundations, a disorganized and overgrown cemetery, and a 1300 foot deep shaft (grated) remain. While exploring the area, I came up with the idea to return with Kodak High Speed Infrared Film (now sadly discontinued), and these are the resulting images. I entered them in the 2008 King County Fair, and won two blue ribbons for the Mine Cart and Headstone 2 images and four red ribbons for the others. The mine cart: This was a hoist foundation, which pulled the mine carts from the mine in the hillside across from the foundation: This was the power plant that supplied power to the mines: This structure carried a water pipe for the town: Finally, a couple of images from the cemetary: All photos were taken with a Nikon FM and 19-35mm Tamron lens, on Kodak High Speed Infrared film, and printed in my darkroom on Ilford Multigrade paper.

Hi, I'm David Woodford, and welcome to my photo blog! I'm currently a student at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Washington, majoring in Marketing, and graduating this spring. My home is Covington, Washington. I've been a photographer since my junior year of high school. I work with both film and digital, and maintain a home darkroom. My current projects include IR photos of abandoned coal mining areas in Washington, particularly Cougar Mountain, near Newcastle, WA, and Franklin, a ghost town east of Black Diamond, WA. I'm planning on expanding the project to the coal mines at Roslyn, WA, and possibly mining operations near Issaquah, WA. I also photograph sports, particularly HS and College Basketball. My other hobbies include Geocaching (which is how I discovered these sites), politics, and realtime strategy games.