Gold in them thar hills! Photo

Photographer’s Note

This is a bar of gold from the Bingham Copper Mine (travelogue, which, see). Oddly, the copper ore from this mine is of low grade--only with huge amounts of ore can they extract the massive amounts of copper that the mine produces.

They also mine just a bit of gold from the big pit. This is a bar of it. It is quite heavey and is probably worth a lot of money, but when I took it to the pawn shop, they would only give me $50 for it. Oh well (sigh).

The title comes from a quasi-saying that old gold prospectors and miners often say in Western movies. The correct English translation would be: "Gold in those hills!"

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Critiques | Translate

marcchia (199) 2004-01-21 0:11

Beautiful shot. At least you got gold from me!

henrye (3498) 2004-01-21 2:05

Beautiful close-up. Great colors, composition and DOF. This is really well done!

zto (292) 2004-01-21 3:49

Wonderfull colour and the structure is amazing. I oove the way you have use the DOF and how the gold takes up the whole photo. The loight casts intresting shadow and highlights on the bar. It's beautifull David.

avigur_11 (21317) 2004-01-21 6:09

Excellent DOF and contrat. Very nice work with the light that highlights the special colors of the gold very well. Beautiful.

manny (21378) 2004-01-21 12:27

Your DOF created a treasure of a shot here. The inscription, the glow..they all work to create this interestingly artistic shot.

orme (6752) 2004-01-21 13:27

Beautiful shot. The lighting on the gold bar is excellent, as is the detail. Good angle - creating black triangles in the corners.

nwoehnl (120) 2004-01-21 14:21

Nice close-up work, David. Especially in the foreground right, the gold really seems to be glowing into my face. Excellent contrast as well; the letters and numbers of the stamping are coming out with a touch of 3-D feel to them. Very artistic!

"Them Thar Hills" is also the title of a 1930's Laurel & Hardy short movie. If I remember correctly, it has nothing to do with the search for gold though, but rather with the boys running into a gang of bootleggers.

Rockyboy (20582) 2004-01-21 15:05

That gold is amazing. Colours are perfect and details are very clear! Well done!

Georges (11185) 2004-01-21 18:13

Je consider cette image comme Macro car le sujet n'est pas bien grand .
Les détails sont vraiment bons ainsi que cette presentation.
Bravo David

pascalbene (1730) 2004-01-21 18:52

Wow, I realy love gold pictures. This one is very very beautiful. A "Chrisostome" picture. I forgot the name of the mythological greek human who loved so gold that everything he touched became gold. Fine gold. (Midas ?).

thien (2102) 2004-01-21 23:19

The golden color and texture is just superb. I think the DOF is excellent, David. I prefer to have a tighter crop to cut down a bit on the dark space on the left but it is also good as it is rightnow.

joseelias (367) 2004-01-22 8:53

I could use a little gold right now... :-)

I like very much your point of view, as it creates a certain dinamic in the composition.

Also the contrast of the gold color with the black is very appealing. The letters and numbers add interesting details to the composition.

Jeppe (18627) 2004-01-22 14:38

Funny - In Danish the title could "Guld i de der bakker” and "de der" would be "them thar" - ok its neither Danish nor English but perhaps those people came from Scandinavia - I would say a million dollar shot - but ok 50 then - thanks for sharing.

yesyuvraj (150) 2004-10-22 15:55

It is one of the best close-up one can ever have. Looks more like a piece of Abstract Art than a photograph. And definately the glitter of Gold cannot be ignored.