05/24/2026
Mule Days (Bishop, California) celebrates the rich history of California's Eastern Sierra—a land shaped by the Paiute people, the Gold Rush, ranchers, packers, and the working mules that helped open the American West.
One tradition that continues to this day is tintype photography. First popular in the mid-1800s, tintypes captured the faces of pioneers, miners, soldiers, and frontier families. Using the same wet-plate process practiced more than 150 years ago, photographs are created by hand from start to finish. Chemicals are mixed on site, the image is exposed in a large-format camera, and the plate is developed immediately in a portable darkroom.
The result is more than a photograph—it's a one-of-a-kind piece of history created much as it would have been during the days of the American frontier.
Edward Moss