Epic Descent: A 665nm Infrared Journey from Montana's Elkhorn Ghost Town
There is a road that falls away from Elkhorn — a town the mountains have mostly reclaimed, its wooden buildings standing quiet as headstones above the Boulder River valley. This is the road that carried it there, once, and carries almost no one now.
I found it under a sky already deciding to break. Above, the clouds had gone the color of iron, pulling rain across the far ridgelines in grey veils. Below, the larch and pine had gone the opposite way entirely — lit from within, burning gold and ember-orange, as if the land had swallowed the last of the light rather than let the storm have it.
This is what drew me to shoot in 665nm infrared: a spectrum invisible to the eye, but not to the camera, not to whatever it is in a place like this that wants to be seen differently. Chlorophyll reflects infrared light in ways visible light never will — turning ordinary forest into something closer to memory, or dream. The road itself remains unchanged, gravel and dust exactly as it is. Everything alive around it turns to flame.
Elkhorn is one of Montana's best-preserved ghost towns, a handful of structures left standing since the silver mines went quiet more than a century ago. I wasn't there for the buildings this time. I was there for the road away from them — the descent, the leaving, the way a landscape holds the shape of everyone who has ever driven out of a place and not come back.
There's a word for locations like this: thin places. Where the veil between what's ordinary and what's eternal wears down to almost nothing. Elkhorn's road, half-swallowed by fire-colored trees under a sky about to open — this felt like one of them.
About This Piece
Epic Descent is part of the Realm of Dreams collection — color infrared work exploring the American landscape as something closer to memory than record. Shot in 665nm infrared along a backcountry road near Elkhorn ghost town, Montana.
Available as a museum-quality print on Fine Art Matte Paper or Acrylic in three panoramic sizes.
Acquire this piece for your collection → [Realm of Dreams Collection, Dream World Images]
The same scene can render completely differently depending on which wavelength you shoot it in, and how much infrared light is actually bouncing off what's in front of you — which you can't always predict just by looking. So when I'm out shooting a scene I really care about, I don't shoot it once. I shoot it several times, often across several different wavelengths, including 850nm for that deep, otherworldly contrast.