One of my favorite go-to places in Apache Junction is the Goldfield Ghost Town. Usually I'm there to photograph the gunfights in the streets on weekends, but as the Christmas season dominates our thought process, they decorated the Ghost Town with an untold number of colorful light strings and some wood fired bonfires scattered around the street.

All of the businesses along the main street got into the spirit of the season and are staying open until 9:00pm to show off their handiwork and enjoying the comments of the visitors. This is the first year that the Ghost Town has tried a Christmas lights event, so everyone was nervous about the outcome.

I brought my camera and tripod along and spent a little more than an hour shooting the lights. I started early enough that most of the people hadn't arrived yet so there were very few spoilers for my long duration photo shots with people straggling through the shot, creating ghostly images. The Ghost Town has an old train system with rails that circle the town and it too was decorated with colorful lights to set the mood for the riders.

My camera is the Canon M6 mark ll shooting with ISO 2,000. f/8. Aperture Priority so the camera set the shutter duration. Editing was done using Affinity Photo ver. 2.3. The final shot, of the train returning to the station, was taken with my Pixel 7 cellphone.

I hope everyone has an enjoyable Christmas season.
Jack Olson