Eagle Lake and Chotard Landing, Mississippi: Quiet Living

Eagle Lake is an oxbow lake in northwest Warren County, Mississippi, about 40 minutes drive northwest of Vicksburg. The lake is popular with boaters and fishermen, but also has a year-round population. Some are retirees and some commute to Vicksburg. My friends and I visit annually in late December for the Audubon Christmas bird count.

On a cold gloomy morning, there are some nice landscape photography opportunities.

There are some urban decay subjects, like this shed in the woods off Hwy 465.

This little church stands abandoned off Hwy 465. I do not know the denomination and the signs were gone.

Some folks are really into hunting here.

Eagle Lake Shore Road parallels the south side of the lake, with some mobile homes and landings.

If the level of the Mississippi River is low, you can proceed west into Tara Wildlife (ask for permission) and follow some dirt roads to one of the rare river overlooks. People who do not live here in the South are often surprised that the Mississippi is often inaccessible from land. Road or bridge access may be tens of miles apart. These sand bars are on the river side of the mainline levee, so if the water is high, this beach and the adjacent woods are flooded.

Chotard, or Chotard Landing, is a community of elevated trailers and cabins on the water side of the mainline levee, facing Lake Chotard. It is popular with fishermen, but because it floods whenever the Mississippi River is high, all the properties must replaced way up on piles.

It is impressive to see some of these places - they are way up. Chotard was part of the Mississippi River until 1934, when the Corps of Engineers removed one of the cutoffs, leaving Chotard Lake as a detached oxbow.

If you need a restroom, the community graciously provides one. What happens in spring when the place floods?

Eagle Lake and Chotard Landing are worth a visit on a nice weekend. Take your binoculars for some good birding. The mature hardwoods are excellent habitat for woodpeckers.

Not much left: Chicot Junction, Arkansas

If you cross the Mississippi River on US 82 over the beautiful new bridge at Greenville heading west and turn south on Highway 65, you will soon drive by a group of abandoned houses in the woods. Oops, you just missed Chicot Junction. There is not much left of the town. The Arkansas Gazetteer states, "Chicot Junction is a populated place located in Chicot County at latitude 33.203 and longitude -91.26. The elevation is 128 feet. Chicot Junction appears on the Eudora North U.S. Geological Survey Map. Chicot County is in the Central Time Zone (UTC -6 hours)."

I am glad I drove by in March, before the spring growth season began. Otherwise, I suspect many of these houses would be completely buried in jungle.

These were once decent little homes.

 I found one mobile home that was occupied.

All the permanent cottages seemed to be deserted, but not in particularly bad condition. Very odd. What was the former business here that has dried up? 

I would like an old Chevrolet like this (but not this particular one).

Keep driving south and you pass through Eudora. It has more activity, but came across this abandoned store. It looked like the owners closed the doors one day and never came back. I feel sorry for places like this. It is the story of rural America in the early 21st century - small towns are simply closing up.

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera, mostly with the 27mm f/2.8 Fuji lens. I processed the files with DxO filmpack 3 or PhotoNinja to simulate black and white film. In the Tri-X mode in DxO, I used the yellow filter, reduced the grain, and increased contrast a bit.

Lost Houses: Lower Main Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Dear Readers, happy and prosperous 2015 to you all.

Main Street is one of Vicksburg's historic streets, and the waterfront and hill near the Yazoo Canal (formerly the main stem of the Mississippi River) is one of the earliest areas to be settled in the 1800s. Sadly, we have lost many of the old houses from this district over the years.

I recall that in the 1980s and early 1990s, the square building at the corner of Main and Washington Streets was a local corner grocery store. Unfortunately, I never photographed the interior.

But the good news is that Rusty's Riverfront Grill now occupies the site (901 Washington Street). This is a success story - an old building with a new life. It has been renovated and expanded.

The next building uphill is a garage at 714 Main Street.

716 Main was an old-fashioned house that had been empty for some time and, as of mid-2014, was being deconstructed. In the second picture, you can see right through the left wall.
June 2015 update: this building has been demolished.

718 Main is in good condition and was occupied in late 2014.

No. 722 is a duplex with plaster or concrete siding made to look like limestone. The brick building in the left distance is the Jackson Street Community Center. That was the former site of a YMCA (click the link).

On the next block east (uphill), the shotgun shacks at nos. 802 and 804 were demolished years ago. This photograph (a Kodachrome slide) is from 2000.

Across the street, at 807 Main, there was once a big 2-story building. I did not pay much attention until I saw the demolition crew at work in February of 1998. These photographs were also Kodachrome slides taken with a Leica camera and 35mm Summicron lens.

At 808, the building had the concrete (or plaster?) siding shaped to look like limestone blocks.

So it goes; slowly but surely, more structures are being removed than built. Vicksburg has more grassy lots than even 20 years ago. Is this the fate of small towns in America?

Burmese Days 9: Yangon Central Station in Tri-X film

Dear Readers, the Yangon Central Railroad Station is such an interesting site for people-watching, I returned with my Leica M2 camera and Tri-X film early one morning to record the scene in black and white.

This huge building was built after World War II between 1947 and 1954 to replace an earlier building that had been destroyed by the fleeing British when the Japanese forces entered Rangoon in 1942. Unfortunately, I could not find any family photographs from the 1950s showing this station. Maybe we never came here.

The ticket booths are old-fashioned and manual.

This is the waiting area for passengers on long-distance trains. We read several accounts that the train to Mandalay is a bumpy and rather uncomfortable overnight trip.

If you plan to take the local commuter Circle Train, you cross the tracks on a crossover and descend to tracks 3 and 4. The guard will direct you if you look confused.

The Circle Train is popular with tourists, and at less than 600 Kyats ($1), it is a bargain. Take water and be ready for humidity, although as of October 2014, there is at least one air-conditioned train.

Pansodan Street crosses the rail yard on an overpass. There are good views of the rail yard from the overpass.

Some of the rail yard looks only partly used. Surely it was much busier in the British era. The men in the lower photograph may have been waiting for work assignments. They all had shoulder bags - possibly lunch or work clothes?

If you visit Rangoon, the Central Station is an interesting stop for people photography. Highly recommended. Please click the link for my earlier post on the Circle Train.

All photographs taken with a Leica M2 rangefinder camera with 35mm or 50mm f/2.0 Summicron lenses. The 35 was the 7-element type 4 Summicron from the late 1990s. I exposed the Kodak Tri-X film at ISO 250 and developed it in Kodak HC110 developer, dilution B for 4:30 minutes. I scanned the negatives at 3,600 dpi with a Plustek 7600i film scanner using Silverfast software.

Burmese Days 8: The Botahtaung Jetty in Tri-X

Dear readers, for my recent trip to Asia, I decided to do black and white photography the traditional way and take real photographs with film. I had not used Kodak Tri-X in a 35mm camera in at least 15 years, but ordered some rolls and brought them to Asia along with my Leica M2, 35- and 50mm Summicron lenses, filters, and a Luna Pro light meter.

The Rangoon waterfront along the Rangoon River is now mostly commercial, with limited water views. But the map shows that a ferry crosses from the Botahtaung Jetty to the town of Dala on the south shore. While the rest of my group explored the Botahtaung Paya, I wandered down to the shore for the view. I thought the ferry would be a barge with a diesel tug but instead consisted of wood boats with outboards. (Note, you can click any photograph to enlarge it.)

This is the view from the ramp looking north into town during a rainstorm.

The ferry operators take people, dogs, bicycles, and motor scooters. I did not see life jackets or lights.

These guys were loading concrete blocks of a size that I know I could not lift, let along hoist into a boat. Notice the fellow's bare toes.

Here are two photographs from the family archives from when we lived in Burma in the 1950s. No one was able to identify the exact location, but it may have been somewhere near the Botahtaung. The banks are sloughing off in the current. In the lower photograph, the temple on the left is being deconstructed to reuse the blocks.

Notice how much the 1957 photographs look like the 2014 ones in tonality and feel. Will our digital files will be viewable after six decades?

Using film is a commitment. You can't casually take a thousand snaps and hope a few are meaningful. And you do not see the results until the film is developed, which may be a few weeks later. If you do not know the craft, you will need to practice. As James Conley wrote in his f/11 blog:

"Shooting film is hard. Compared to a modern digital camera, exposure with the Leica is unintuitive. "Focusing" is a goal rather than a consistent possibility. Restricting oneself to a maximum of 36 exposures is a serious limitation (though in a later post I'll talk about why it's a creative answer). Not being able to see in the viewfinder the effect of various camera settings seemingly distances the photographer from the moment."

Several people I met in Asia were fascinated that I was using a Leica film camera. At the airport X-ray in Hong Kong, the agent asked if I had a Leica M2 or M3 (I responded M2). All X-ray operators were accommodating when I asked for hand inspection. The hotel clerk in Hanoi asked if he could look through the viewfinder and said his father used a Leica. Our friends in Hong Kong had a Leica in the house somewhere. Slowly but surely, many serious photographers are returning to film. I developed my Tri-X in Kodak HC110 developer at dilution B, at 4:30 minutes at 67 deg. F, with 5 sec. agitation every 30 sec. We will look at more black and white examples in later posts.