Olympia in the Morning, Part 1 (Oly 04)

Early morning in December, the light is soft and misty in Olympia. Well, it rains much of the time, so indeed, the light is softened and colors are muted. It was time to experiment again with color negative film. One early morning, I left my car at a repair shop on Capitol Way and walked home through the city. Here are some random scenes on the way.

Capitol Way, early morning

Time for some wiggling, 117 Columbia Street NW

Alley parallel to State Street

Alley parallel to State Street

Rhythms Coffee, 210 4th Avenue W.

According to Rhythms, "Stay tuned for some of the finest coffee on earth, never before served in Olympia." I think the best coffee I ever drank was in Colombia, but that is a story for another day.

 

It is fishy at 116 4th Avenue

Capitol Way view south, rather uninspiring

OSSA Skinworks, 109 Capitol Way N. Could they make my skin look good?

Washington Street view south, also uninspiring

Every city in USA seems to have a Washington Street. This one is not inspiring, but it does have some older architecture.

This ends Part 1 of our morning walk. Please type "Olympia" in the search box if you want to see other Olympia articles.

I took these photographs on long-expired Kodak Bright Sun (i.e., Gold 100) film using my Pentax Spotmatic F camera and the 50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens. This is one of the mid-1970s versions of the 1.4 lens with multi coating and without elements containing thorium salts. Some early 1970s versions yellowed because of the thorium glass. Those are renouned for superb optical quality. Most of my exposures this morning were at ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8. It is convenient to have a large aperture lens. 

This Gold 100 is more grainy that the Gold I shot years ago when the film was in production. The colors have that old film look, but this roll survived the decades reasonably intact. Still, years have passed, and I suggest you not seek out Gold 100. I wish Kodak would reintroduce it. I tried their contemporary Gold 200 and thought it was too grainy. But in 120 size (medium format), the modern 200 might be fine. The Gold 100 decades ago was superb.

Olympia with Fuji NPH400 (Abandoned Films 12) (Oly 03)

Dear readers, we will continue our irregular series on Olympia, Washington. 

Moving to a new home in a new state was quite an adventure. Closets and boxes in our former home revealed all sorts of treasures (much of it junk). How did we accumulate all this stuff? Is this the curse of American suburbia? 

But I found some goodies. The depths of the freezer disgorged a box of 120 size Fuji NPH 400 film. The box expired in Feb. 2005. The last time I used a roll may have been in 2018, when I drove to Asheville, North Carolina, to The Vintage car show. Six years later, was it this NPH still viable? 

Being a 400 film, I thought it would be useful for hand-held work with my Rolleiflex, which has a ƒ/3.5 lens. One drizzly January morning, I walked around west Olympia while waiting for car repair. 

Eagan's Drive-In, 1420 Harrison Avenue - not yet open for the day

Eagan's toilets, maybe not available today

The dancing burger, Eagan's Drive-In

Division Street view north

Taco trucks ready to roll, Harrison Avenue

I took the Rolleiflex out on a cheerful sunny day. The NPH film responded much better.

Swantown Boatworks, Marine Drive NE 

Conclusion: Semi-success, this long-expired NPH 400 was still viable. But some of the frames were slightly underexposed, some more extreme. My Luna Pro light meter is working correctly because other rolls of film from 2024 are properly exposed, frame after frame. Could this old NPH film be more sensitive to reciprocity failure because of its age?  (Reciprocity with camera film means that the film sensitivity is not linear over a standard light range. Therefore, darker scenes need more exposure than a light meter might indicate.) For this roll, I set the Exposure Index at 320, but next time, I will use EI=200 or even lower. Regardless, it is time to use it up. Even frozen, it will not last forever.

Thanks for enduring another adventure in expired camera film. 

Heading West Through Texas, October 2023

We were in a hurry heading west. It had been stressful to escape Houston via US290, but at least we could use the HOV lanes. As dusk approached, we passed through Somerville, a town about half way between Houston and Austin. I saw a large BNSF rail yard and had to stop and take a frame or two in the gloomy dusk light. 

The view west, Somerville, Texas (Fuji Acros film, 135mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens hand-held)

A day later, we were still driving west through Texas. Wow, what a large state. Long-term readers may remember that in November of 2022, we drove to the Rio Grande Valley. That took two days, also. 

Lockwood Street, Tahoka, Texas (55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lens)

Drizzle was falling, and we need to take a stretch break. As I recall, there was no coffee shop in Tahoka. 

Sorry, I could not resist, a gaudy phone pic. of a former gas station with a cover to keep off the rain. 

This was a frustrating trip. I wanted to spend at least two weeks on the trip and do some creative photography, but we had to rush to Olympia to meet the moving truck. One of us should have flown to Olympia and then returned to some airport en route to continue a more leisurely drive. Texas offers a lot of interesting photo subject matter, even in small towns like the examples above. It has been fun exploring Texas. But will I ever return to the great open expanses? 

Please type "Texas" in the search box to see previous articles. 

I took the black and white frames on Fuji Acros film with my Pentax Spotmatic F camera and 55mm and 135mm lenses.

Moving Out: Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana

Background

Isle de Jean Charles is a small fishing community at the south end of Island Road in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. It feels like the end of the world. The town was the home of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians for almost 200 years. All the houses now are elevated on piles or stilts, and there is limited dry land. One low and vulnerable road, a spur off of Louisiana 665, leads to the town. 

Because Island Road is often flooded, sometimes for days, and safety services can not be guaranteed for the residents, the community needs to move. According to a January 2024 BBC article, "This Louisiana town moved to escape climate-linked disaster," the residents of Isle Jean Charles are in the process of relocating to The New Isle Community, much further inland and safe from flooding. Building a major levee system to protect the town from hurricane surge was too expensive, and relocation was the only alternative.

Sediments of the Mississippi Delta

The title of the BBC article is somewhat deceptive. Rising sea level is making the road to Isle de Jean Charles more vulnerable to storm surges and even normal high tides. And the rising sea exacerbates other issues throughout south Louisiana such as infrastructure, drainage, pollutants, and sea water incursion further into the swamps. But at least four other major factors account for land loss in southern Louisiana:

1. The sediment is sinking. All this marshy deltaic sediment came down the Mississippi River. As the immense sediment mass of the Mississippi Delta dewaters over centuries, it compresses. 

2. Oil and gas producers dredged channels through the marshes. These channels allowed seawater to enter the marshes and kill fresh-water marsh vegetation. Without the root structures and emergent plants, storms washed away the limited soil. And the lack of plants means minimal new sediment gets trapped.

3. The path of the Mississippi River has been channelized by levees for 200 years. During floods, sediment no longer spreads out over the adjacent delta. When the US Army Corps of Engineers dredges the navigation channel, they place some of this material onto the nearby marshes. Openings in the levees also allow flood water to spread. But these two placement and diversion mechanisms still do not replicate the pre-engineered river when it flowed unconstrained.

4. Less sediment is brought down to south Louisiana. Compared to the era before the late 1800s, levees line all of the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries. The era of mass tree deforestation is over. Farming practice considers erosion control much more than it did 100 years ago. Dams on the Missouri and Ohio River systems trap sediment in their ponds. The Corps of Engineers reduces bank sloughing and erosion with concrete mats. In effect, we are retaining sediment on the continent. 

This is a complicated topic. A vast technical literature examines sediment, hydrology, climatology, and geotechnical issues in Southern Louisiana.

A March 2019 article in The New Yorker, "Louisiana's Disappearing Coast," is a readable and detailed description of the factors that cause land loss. 

John McFee's seminal 1987 article in The New Yorker, "The Control of Nature, Atchafalaya," describes the heroic efforts to prevent the Mississippi River from changing its path to debouch into the Gulf of Mexico at the Atchafalaya delta, not the present delta.  

Isle de Jean Charles in 2019

Bayou or boat canal parallel to Island Road, Isle de Jean Charles, April 28, 2019

Pedestrian bridge over boat canal

My wife and I drove out to Isle de Jean Charles in spring of 2019. We were on a trip to explore the Acadian Parishes of Louisiana and revisit some towns that we had seen before, such as Dulac and Lafayette. We had read about Isle de Jean Charles and wanted to see the town. Driving on Island Road felt like we were on a boat crossing the marshes and lakes. In many stretches, the pavement was only a foot or less above the water.

We stopped at the marina. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and the town gents were drinking beer and having a good old time out on the deck. They said they had seen the plans to move everyone to a new town and were somewhat skeptical. Some of the town residents already had homes further inland. They watched the tide predictions, and if high water or a tropical storm was predicted, they would head north to stay with relatives and wait for the weather to pass. The gents also wondered if the plan was to move the Chawtaws out and then the developers would build condominiums. 

Wood crossovers to provide access to Island Road

Boat canal almost filled with vegetation

Elevated Isle de Jean Charles house

This was a nice afternoon. The few people we met were friendly. But we were not in town long enough to get a sense of how many people lived there at that time. It felt quiet. If the BBC article is correct, Isle de Jean Charles may be much quieter soon. I am glad that my wife and I had the chance to visit when it was still possible.

I took these photographs with a Hasselblad 501CM camera on Kodak Panatomic-X film using 50mm and 80mm Zeiss lenses. Some were tripod-mounted. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi film scanner. Panatomic-X is a mid-century wonder product for this type of subject matter. 

 

Continuing Decline, Johnson Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Red outline shows Johnson Street (from ArcGIS Online) 

Johnson Street is one of many semi-hidden narrow Vicksburg roads whose location was dictated by the area's complicated loess topography. Many roads followed the crest of ridges. Johnson Street follows a ridge that sweeps downhill from South Washington Street (just north of Lee Street) into the valley that is now occupied by the Vicksburg High School ball fields. Many people probably never go down Johnson unless they specifically planned to see a resident there or possibly turned in by accident.

Twenty years ago, many of the houses along Johnson were occupied. But one by one, they were abandoned or the city condemned them because of dangerous or unsanitary conditions. Then the city razed the buildings. Here are photographs of the remaining houses in April of 2023.  

This is the site of the former 748 Johnson Street after the city demolished it. A bulldozer graded the dirt down the hill. Contractors do this work. According to a 2020 article in The Vicksburg Post, it cost the city about $25,000 to raze a simple wooden house and clear the land of debris.  

728 Johnson Street (Kodak Ektar 100 film, Pentax Spotmatic F camera, 28mm SMC Takumar lens)

728 Johnson Street

This little mid-century house at 728 had a serious gullying problem below the front right corner of the foundation. The gully served as a convenient trash dump. I looked in the door and a homeless guy was sleeping in one of the bedrooms. He and some other guys called this place home. 

733 Johnson Street (28mm SMC Takumar lens)

733 Johnson Street (28mm SMC Takumar lens)

Parlor of 733 Johnson Street (35mm Super-Takumar lens braced on a window ledge)

No. 733 was a typical Vicksburg house where the front door was approximately at street level while the back projected out over the gully, supported by wood pilings. Hundreds of houses like this were built early in the 20th century, and they survived for decades despite their precarious supports. Once the house is abandoned or condemned, the lot cannot be redeveloped.

Downhill side of 733 Johnson Street

This is the gully (valley) just north of Johnson Street. This looks wild and impassible, but deer, raccoons, and possums wander these wooded spaces throughout the city. Snakes do, too.

735 Johnson Street (28mm SMC Takumar lens)

This is another modest mid-century house. I assume it was built on a lot once occupied by an older early-20th century cottage. The back was perched over the valley like other houses on Johnson Street.

Church bus, Holly Grove Missionary Baptist Church, 746 Johnson Street

754 Johnson Street (50mm Hasselblad lens)

This ends out short walk on Johnson Street. All these houses have been demolished since I took these photographs. Slowly but surely, Vicksburg's older neighborhoods are becoming less densely populated as these older houses are torn down.

The 2023 photographs are from Kodak Ektar 100 film from my new/old Pentax Spotmatic F camera.

Another Random Walk around Vicksburg, Mississippi (2021-2023)

Downtown

In the last article, I looked at houses along South Washington Street. Let's take a semi-random walk in the southern part of Vicksburg plus one view downtown and see what interesting photons passed through my camera lens and into the film emulsion. Most of these frames will also be from color negative film, mostly Kodak Ektar 100. Please click any picture to see more details.

Downtown Vicksburg from China Street (Royal Gold 25 film, Leica M2, 50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens)

As of 2023, The Vicksburg apartments are being renovated. Residents had to move to other accomodations around town. I hope this continues a downtown revival. The brick building in the left is the long-unused Junius Ward Johnson YMCA. It has been empty for at least 20 years. 

South Washington Street Area

View west towards the Mississippi River from Washington Street (Hasselblad, 80mm ƒ/2.8 lens)

This the view west to the Mississippi River (the shiny water at the horizon). The Yazoo canal is out of sight just beyond the water tower. The water tower is a remnant of the cotton compress, of which very little remains now. With an amazing view like this, in most cities, a neighborhood like this would have gentrified. This one is still a mess.

Washington Street view north near Bowman Street

Tri-State Tire, 2209 Washington Street

This unusual building with decorated arches was once an ice company. Then, in the 1960s, it was the Seale-Lily ice cream store. Mr. Christ bought it in the 1970s and converted the building into a tire business. His daughter, Susan Christ, runs the business now and provides courteous and efficient service. I wrote about Tri-State in 2018. 

1009 (?) Bowman Street

1007 and 1009 Bowman Street

Turn right from Washington Street onto Bowman Street. Some of the housing stock is seriously degraded. 

Magnolia School, Bowman Street

The former Magnolia School has been unused since at least the mid-1980s. Former windows were bricked in decades ago. From the 1920s to the 1950s, this was one of the most progressive schools for African-American students. J.G.H. Bowman, the principle of Magnolia Avenue High School, was highly respected for his dedication and accomplishments in running the school. The street is now named after him. 

807 Speed Street

It looks like the occupants ran out of blue paint. Speed Street is pretty rough.

Drummond Street Area

Pink house, 2721 Green Street

Ducks in a row, 911 Bowmar Avenue 

2815 Drummond Street

This four-unit apartment has been empty for at least five years. The front porch is sagging. As so often with these older houses, status unknown.

Johnny's truck, Candee Street

This ends our short walk around Vicksburg. I took the 2023 photographs with Kodak Ektar 100 film using my new Pentax Spotmatic F camera and 50mm ƒ/1.4 or 55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lenses. Watch for more Vicksburg photographs soon. Thanks for coming along!