Cripple Creek

Cripple Creek, Colorado is a small mining (and gambling) town about an hour west of Colorado Springs. It popped up in the 1800s during a gold rush and, along with the town of Victor, is one of the towns serving the still productive (and appropriately named) Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine.

img Sony A7IV, Sony 40mm f2.5 G

There are two things I love about Cripple Creek:

  1. It’s what I call “small town exotic”. There are big casinos with fancy steakhouses; to anyone in a large city it would be limiting, but if you’re from nowheresville Colorado and want a night or two in a nice hotel and casino it’s pretty great.

  2. It’s a place where things happen at night. For me, that means the mornings are the most interesting time. It’s super quiet - other than the 24 hour casinos and the gas station, not much is open.

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

Most days I’ll ride my motorcycle out, which on its own makes the drive it worth it! But also I’ve been able to do some Actual Photography. I decided to pretty aggressively cut down my photo kit - selling my Leica Q2 (again), most of my Fuji X gear, most of my Sony FE glass, and almost all of my film cameras (on the way out: Konica Hexar RF, Minolta TC-1, Leica M3). This opened up some room, both physically and in the budget, so now I’m back to a Fuji GFX 100 II.

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

(I was taking the above photo and a man stuck his head out of the door in the lower right. He saw me and went back inside, then about 45 seconds later a sheriff appeared and followed me at a distance until I left town. A suspicious character, no doubt.)

The GFX 100 II is a chonky boy of a camera with a wonderul sensor. It also supports at 65:24 crop (aka X-Pan) and you still get a ~50mp file. I’m perfectly happy with my 24mp Ricoh most of the time…but man it’s nice getting giant files!

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

img Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 80mm f1.7

Anyway, Cripple Creek. I’m looking forward to getting out there in the future; it’s kind of has a “quiet busy” feel that I like. Just gotta avoid the fuzz.