Folsom Lake College photography students will have their work displayed November 11 through December 11 at the college’s El Dorado Center in the Library. The display features 43 student photos of Mono Lake and the ghost town of Bodie, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas not too far east of Yosemite.
The photos were taken by students of a photography class taught twice a year since 2003 by Betty Sederquist through the college’s El Dorado Center in Placerville. The class featured six weeks of lectures on photo technique followed by an intense three-day trip to the region, with students carpooling and staying in motels or camping.
“The students worked from before sunrise until after sunset on some of the days. By Sunday night most of them were exhausted,” says Sederquist. “But it was all so worthwhile. It’s a candy store for photographers. Every time we went there we found something different.”
Mono Lake is notable for its saline waters and eerie tufa columns that tower along the lake shore. Bodie, which some history buffs consider the best-preserved ghost town in the West, has been maintained in a “state of arrested decay” by California state parks since it became part of the state park system in 1962. The photo students enjoyed a unique opportunity to go inside the Bodie buildings, a privilege extended to perhaps a couple of hundred people a year. Sederquist obtained a special permit in order to go inside many of the buildings, and guides Ed and Joanne Allen, longtime docents at the park, escorted the group for the day.
The hours for the El Dorado Center Library are Monday through Thursday, 8:30am-7:30pm, and Friday, 8:30am-4pm. Admission to the display is free (a daily parking pass can be purchased for $1). For a map with directions to the El Dorado Center, please go to www.flc.losrios.edu, click first on “Campus Maps” and then “El Dorado Center.”
This is the last Mono Lake/Bodie class to be offered at Folsom Lake College for a while. Filling its niche in Spring 2009 will be a Yosemite field class.
Submitted by Scott Crow, Public Information Officer, Folsom Lake College
