Another visit to the Farmers' Market in Vrahati, Greece (with Ektar 100 film)

Whenever I travel anywhere, I try to check out local markets. My brother-in-law took me to the farmers' market in Vrahati, near Corinth, in the Peloponnese region of Greece. We have been here before, but this time I had a film camera (my little Yashica Electro 35CC) and, of course, I could not resist. The light was glarey and unforgiving, but the automatic exposure system in the little Yashica handled the conditions well.

Map from ESRI ArcGIS software

The market is set up on streets in town. I am not sure if the stands are here every day of the week or if the vendors need to take their umbrellas and tables away on certain days. Parking is a real mess - typical Greek village.

Most shoppers buy vegetables and fruit. I did not see as many vendors this time with inexpensive plastic goods, utensils, and clothing as I did in 2008. Then, I saw more Roma and Albanians selling miscellaneous inexpensive goods, but maybe they have moved on.

 The fish looked good. Some is locally caught, some comes in frozen from the Atlantic Ocean.

The tomatoes are locally grown in the rich soil of the Peloponnese. All the vegetables here taste like they are supposed to.

I have written before about other markets. If you are interested, type "market" in the search box, or try the words Athens, Kathmandu, or Rangoon.

I took all these photographs with Kodak Ektar 100 film in my little Yashica Electro 35CC camera with its fixed 35mm f/1.8 lens. The color balance tended towards red because of the many orange umbrella covers. Better color balance is one big advantage of digital capture, but I still derive more reward from film.

Catty in Cali (Parque El Gato De Tejada) - Travels in Colombia 01

El Gato Rio by Hernando Tejeda with the lovely Vivian checking out the photographer, Cali, Colombia

Well, Cali is not catty at all, it is actually very nice. Cali is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department of Colombia. It is a major city with over 2,300,000 residents. The Cali River runs through downtown and features a unique sculpture display, the creative felines of the famous Cat Park, or Parque El Gato De Tejada. According to trpifreakz, "The park got its name, Parque del Gato, from the creator of a giant bronze cat sculpture, Hernando Tejada. The giant sculpture, called El Gato Rio – the River Cat, was erected on the banks of Cali River in 1996. El Gato Rio was created in Bogota and transferred to Cali, which already sounds like an impossible feat – the giant cat is 3.5 meters tall and weighs 3 tons. In Cali, the sculpture became the centerpiece of the newly renovated park by the river."

No urban decay this time! These cheerful felines were too good to resist. One morning, when the tour group was organizing at the hotel, I walked down to the Rio Cali by myself and took a series of digital images. Sorry these are just from a mobile phone. These little (big?) guys were a bit difficult to record because of background distractions. At the site, each has a descriptive sign. Later pictures from Colombia will be from film.

Colombia is a great tourist destination. As of early 2019, the towns in the south central part of the country looked prosperous, and the people were friendly and cheerful. Construction and improvement was ongoing in both rural areas and large towns. Traffic is heavy, stores are well-stocked with goods, restaurants are very good. The country appears to be thriving.

Corner Restaurant, Bailey Avenue, Jackson, Mississippi

An old-fashioned commercial building/strip mall at the corner of Bailey Avenue and Fortification Street has interested me over the years. I do not know the vintage of the building, but I guess pre-World War II. As of 2004, at least one unit in the building was still occupied, but I think all are closed as of 2019.

On the Avenue, 2004, Kodachrome slide, Nikon F3, 200mm AF-Nikkor ED lens

In 2004, On the Avenue restaurant was open for business when I took this Kodachrome from across the street. Prices were great! (But I did not have lunch there.)

In 2018, I had some Panatomic-X film in my Hasselblad and drove to Bailey Avenue to look around. The building appeared to be totally unused.

Note the decorative elements, sort of art deco. I am impressed that builders decades ago made an effort to add some aesthetic elements to commercial buildings. Compare with today's boring steel quick-construction commercial buildings.  

Bailey Avenue is rather depressing, with many unused buildings and empty lots. But there is a lot of traffic - where are these people all going? 

Baobab Trees and Elephants, Tanzania

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (Panasonic G3 digital file, reprocessed with DXO Filmpack 5)

My wife and I recently watched the Netflix nature program, Our Planet. It features some spectacular photography from harsh environments, including animals seldom photographed (such as the Siberian Tiger).  Episode 5, "From Deserts to Grasslands," described how baobab trees have incredibly deep roots that can tap water while the surface is in severe drought. I remembered being amazed by the huge baobabs in Tanzania and decided to revisit some 2015 files.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Baobab trees are found in arid parts of Madagascar, Africa, Arabia, and Australia. The trunks can be meters in diameter and contain a large amount of water. In drought, elephants chew on the trunks to extract moisture. Sometimes, the trunk has hollowed out and provides habitat for bats, birds, termites, and other critters. The trees can be 2000 years old.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (polarizing filter)

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (polarizing filter)

My friend Ed and I took a 4-day safari after our Kilimanjaro climb. Tarangire National Park is about 4 bumpy hours west of Arusha. It was quite arid when we visited in October. From the viewpoint over the river, we could see lions, elephants, and antelope. The air temperature was comfortable, and there were no mosquitoes.

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

The pond was especially interesting because baboons, antelope, and other animals came to drink. We had to stay in the Toyota Land Cruiser, but as long as we were inside, the animals seemed to not notice us (or at least not be concerned). I think the tree in the foreground was a variety of Acacia (genus Acacia).

Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Yellow-billed storks (Mycteria ibis), Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The Ngorongoro Crater is an astonishing geological terrain, a volcanic caldera that is 600m deep and 20km across. It is unbroken, meaning no rivers flow out of the caldera. It is considered an active volcano. I did not see any baobab trees, but the caldera does include grassland, swamp, forest, and  a soda lake. Once again, another place to visit with more time on the ground to observe and photograph - with real film.

Note: the Yellow-billed Stork is sometimes called a Wood Ibis, but it is confusingly named because it is a stork, not an ibis.

Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania

This big lady came up to the Land Cruiser. We stayed very still, but she and her family were pretty mellow, snuffled around, and headed back into the forest.

Time for diesel and a broken key, Mto Wa Mbu village, Tanzania

All good things must end. We had to drive back to Arusha. It is a 3-hour drive over bumpy roads, rough going. Some tourists fly in on small planes to an airstrip somewhere in the area. That would be the smart way to maximize your time in the nature area and avoid endless potholes. But Arusha is reasonably interesting; older articles are at this link and this link.

I took these images with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens and a polarizing filter for scenes with sky. To convert to black and white, I opened the RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements (using ACR 7.3), then opened DxO FilmPack 5 to use the Tri-X black and white film emulation. It is OK but not the real thing. I need to return to Tanzania with real cameras with film.

Long forgotten: the Pinewood Motor Court, Hwy. U.S. 80, Vicksburg

The Pinewood Motor Court was located east of Vicksburg on historic US 80, formerly the Dixie Overland Highway. The restaurant and motel have been closed since 1979.

The art moderne building was a restaurant. A 1950s post card labeled it as Cassino's Pinewood Grill."

The sign must have been impressive in its day, blazing with incandescent lights. I wonder if they flashed in a pattern in the direction of the arrow? Unfortunately, the "Pinewood" and "Grill" signs are gone.

When I moved to Vicksburg, the restaurant was still intact, but some of the motel units had been semi-deconstructed. The roofs were off, and you could see the cheerful pink tiles of the showers and lavatories.

In the early 1980s, an office in the middle of the parking lot was still intact.

The attendant in the office could survey the motel units and ensure that proper morals were maintained (or that no African Americans tried to check in).

Here are two samples of the same scene, one color and the other monochrome. Which tells the story better? These are scans of 4×5" Fujichrome 50 and Kodak Tri-X film from a Tachihara camera.

Preservation Mississippi wrote about the Pinewood in 2014. Read some of the comments for background information. A 2005 Vicksburg Post article summarized some of the history:

“My mother and father bought the first few acres in 1939,” said Gay Strong, who owns the Pinewood property on U.S. 80.  

At that time, U.S. 80 was the main all-weather, east-west highway from Savannah, Ga., to San Diego. When Richard and Mary Jo Cassino Strong first bought the land from the Dees family, a small grocery occupied the property. 

“Dad named it the Parkway Inn,” Strong said. 

Though busy before, the highway really became heavily traveled during World War II with convoys of military trucks rumbling through. After the war, the traffic scarcely diminished as more people bought automobiles and personal travel took off. In 1940 and 1941, the Strongs built the first eight motel units on the east end of the property adjacent to the building that housed the restaurant. In the 1950s, they built the 14 units on the west end of the property. 

“The restaurant was originally called the Pinewood Gardens,” Strong said. “I guess because we had so many flowers planted around it.” 

Later the popular eatery was called the Pinewood Grill. The original restaurant building burned in 1950. 

Strong said Mike Guido and Marie Angelo operated the restaurant after the Strongs, and Gay Strong’s uncle Frank Cassino took it over after the 1953 tornado destroyed his Vicksburg Candy Co. Cassino moved his restaurant to Openwood and Jackson street in the 1960s. 

“When we first started it, I guess you would call it a family affair,” Strong said. “It was Mama and Daddy and me.” She said the cooks were from the U.S. Army Corps of  Engineers fleet. 

“We had fresh eggs. We grew our own vegetables,” she said. The intestate highways began being built in this area in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and that wrote the death warrants for the Pinewood and many other motels and restaurants along the old U.S. highway system. 

By the 1970s, the Strongs could see the end coming. They tried to stave it off by renting the old motel rooms, which had kitchens, as efficiency apartments, to construction workers by the week and month. The end finally came and they closed the Pinewood in late 1979.

The photographs above are from 35mm Kodachrome 25 film, Fujichrome 50 in 4×5" size, and Kodak Tri-X 400.

From the Archives: Moscow, Soviet Union, in 1978 (Plus-X film)

Kremlin walls from the Moscow River in 1978, Kodak Plus-X film, Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens

Kremlin walls from Bol'shoy Kamennyy Most (bridge)

Vodovzvodnaya Tower, Moscow

A few weeks ago, I had coffee with my karate friend Tatyana. She remembered her childhood in the Soviet Union. When I told her I had visited Moscow and Leningrad in 1978, she immediately asked if she could see my pictures. Well, that led to retrieving my negatives and scanning them. They were on Kodak Plus-X film exposed with the same Leica IIIC that I still presently use. The negatives were scratched and muddy in the low exposure areas. Maybe muddy low tones were a characteristic of Plus-X, but I am not sure. Back then, my technique was haphazard, and I can't recall who developed this roll. The scratches may be my doing. I do not see much grain, and in those days I sometimes used Microdol-X, which was a fine-grain film developer (i.e., it was designed to reduce the visual appearance of grain). But I was staying in Athens in those days, so maybe a Greek lab developed them. Regardless, they required some serious cleaning with the heal tool in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and some adjustment with the curve to improve tonality.

Red Square from the GUM department store

This is the view of Red Square and the Kremlin walls taken from the GUM store. The GUM department store was a giant arcade built during the czarist era. It was reasonably well-stocked when we visited in October of 1978. Tatyana said Moscow and Leningrad were quite cosmopolitan in those days, but small towns in the hinterland had stores with empty shelves. We bought something in the GUM, but I do not remember what. The purchase process was multi-step. First you pointed out what you wanted to a clerk, and she wrote out a ticket for you. Then you took the ticket to the cashier's counter. The cashier took your tickets and added the total amount on an abacus. She accepted your Rubles (definitely no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and regardless, I did not have any cards in those days). Then the lady gave you a receipt in multiple copies, which you took back to the original counter. Upon close examination of the receipt, the lady gave you your merchandise. They were reasonably friendly and did not seem too surprised to see foreigners. That was the era of Perestroika, when the Soviet Union was semi-opening and increasing interaction with the outside world. Tourists were encouraged to come, stay in hotels, and spend foreign currency.

As tourists, we were herded into one of the Beryozka shops. These only accepted foreign currency and catered to tourists, diplomats, government officials, and special people (athletes? ballerinas?). The Beryozka shops sold goods that were hard to get in normal shops, but most local people were forbidden to enter the premises, plus they usually did not have any foreign currency. We saw the normal offerings of liquor, cans of caviar, and some jewelry. I almost bought a Kiev camera but passed.

In the photograph through the arch, the people in the distance are waiting to see Lenin's body. If we tourists wanted to enter the mausoleum, the guards would have put us in front of all those people, but that seemed rude and we did not want to flaunt privilege. So we never did see Lenin's body. Stalin  and other notables are buried at the base of the walls. Notice the gents hanging around in "plain" clothes? We assumed were being tracked, but who knows? Maybe our grumpy Intourist guide was the only official watching our group. In our hotel room, we occasionally said "Hi!" and "How are you today?" to the telephone receiver.

Soviet tourists, bronze Czar Cannon (cast in 1586)

The premier tourist site was the Kremlin, the ancient seat of power of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. We were surprised how open it was. You could not enter the government buildings, but could pretty freely walk around and take pictures. I occasionally looked for First Secretary Brezhnev, but of course, he was nowhere to be seen.

Church of the Nativity, Kremlin 

Several ancient cathedrals and churches are inside the walls of the Kremlin. Although religion was officially discouraged in the communist era, some churches were maintained and, I think, held services. The government preserved others as museums.

St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow

St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square

St. Basil's Cathedral, (from Wikipedia: The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennovo)) is an architectural wonder. This, too, was a museum. I recall the inside being rather dark and claustrophobic. The ornate chambers were much more confined than the soaring spaces in Gothic cathedrals in France or Germany.

Smolensk Cathedral

The bell tower of the 1690 Smolensk Cathedral dominates the walls and passages in the ancient Novodevichy Convent. This is now a museum.

Bolchoi, Moscow

We saw the Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione) at the Bolshoi. I recall a superb performance, but cannot remember if it was sung in Italian or Russian. Also, I cannot recall if we went with our tour group or just bought tickets and attended by ourselves.

We stayed in an old hotel called the Berlin. It was on Pushechnaya Street and and within walking distance of Red Square and most tourist sites. It dated back to the Czarist era and looked like it had not received much maintenance or cleaning since the 1917 revolution. Sturdy babushka ladies sat at a desk on each floor and gave you your room key while they glared at you. I am not sure if they worked for the KGB, but they certainly had been instructed to report any suspicious happenings.

This was a quick tourist look at Moscow. I am sorry I did not take more pictures of ordinary life. There are some slides in my boxes, but scanning will wait for "some day" (like so many other mythological projects). These black and white frames were from Kodak Plus-X film, exposed with my dad's Leica IIIC camera and 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens, which I am still using many decades later.