Bannak Montana, Ghost town

Our Photography class went on an excursion to Bannak Montana- a real live(?) Ghost town! Its a mining community and has been abandoned and re-use repeatedly for over 100 years. We were lucky on our field trip because we were allowed to go into any building and any room to take pictures in! I took over 300+ shots and narrowed them down to these favorites of the day. I also used a software that creates a HDR photos (high depth resolution) and since the software people want me to buy it they added a bar at the bottom of the HDR pictures. I had so much fun just taking a full day to take photos! I could do this for a living! Enjoy!

A couple miles outside the town there is the Bannak Cemetery. The whole bus load of us (around 60 students) had a contest to run into the cemetery and taken pictures. We only had 3 minutes and at the end we showed our favorite shot to the teacher and she picked her favorite. I got second with the picture above! I was pretty excited

ITS A GHOST!!! I told you this place was haunted. I would love to say that this mysteriously showed up in the picture, but it didn't. Kelsi is my ghosty here and we did this together in the town-not photoshopped in post production. It was so easy that it makes me question any other ghost pictures I've ever seen before.

Here is the stair case in the Hotel, the most haunted of all the buildings. Its eerie to walk around there. Good thing we went in groups of 5 of us!

The view of the town outside the second story window of the hotel.

The same winding staircase from above, just a different view.

This is the chapel in the town.

The weather that day was bi-polar to say the least. It would blizzard for an hour and freeze us all to the bone. Then an hour later it'd be clear and sunny. Made me grateful for insulation in my apartment! I can't imagine living back then and having to go through a winter there!

Jill was in our group as well! Couldn't miss the opportunity to do some portraits!

Kelsi, in the flesh this time!

All the mountains surrounding were gorgeous! Luckily- no bear sightings!

Mountain Man Max, also in our group. We all teased him about his hat. Until it started to blizzard off-and-on, then we were jealous!

This was probably the most interesting building- the first floor was a school, the second floor was a Mason temple! The temple had everything set up and laid out. It felt weird to take pictures of all the stuff up there and have chosen not to post any of it. I kept the shots though if anyone ever wants to go through them.

Rooms in the Hotel.

Through another window. I just love the moved glass.

Jill is so photogenic! I couldn't help but get tons of shots!

Lastly, I didn't take this picture - could you guess?! Max took this and posted it on his blog, since its of me I figured it was OK to copy it!