The second stop on our fabulous outing to Tucson was a kitschy tourist attraction called Old Tucson Studios. It is used for filming, but as far as I can tell its biggest claim to fame was being the set for The Three Amigos. Not exactly a Hollywood legend. Even though everything there is fake, it is a pretty decent simulation of an old western town. Besides, I like taking photos of fake stuff that looks real. One of my favorite photos is a fake Costa Rican storefront at the Phoenix zoo. You would swear it was taken in dusty little third world town. For this stop I switched to my 16-35mm lens. Of course the things I found most interesting were the little detail shots. Fortunately this lens will focus pretty close, as long as you don’t mind standing right on top of whatever you’re trying to photograph.
We didn’t watch the big stunt show they do at the Studio. It lasts 30 minutes and we still had our primary destinations for the day ahead of us. We did get sucked into a really bad old mine “tour” given by Terrible Tom. I think the Terrible part of his name was in reference to his breath. The tour was a ten minute walk through a cheesy haunted mine, complete with skeletons and strobe lights. We didn’t spend much time at Old Tucson Studios, but I think I can be comfortable in recommending that it’s not worth the price of admission.
