Sunday squares: A random strip mall

A place that once was and a river that still is

I've spent quite a bit of time lately researching ghost towns in the area. Most of these came into being around the time the first homesteaders came to start anew and flourished for a short time before dying away. Now, almost a century later, there is very little left to mark the existence of any sort of settlement or activity. Just an obscure name and a little history.

Rock Bluff, Nebraska is one of these places. Once an important location for those crossing the Missouri River and even home to a college, the town disappeared early in the 20th century. Now all that remains is the gravel Rock Bluff Road and a makeshift park where the steamboats once docked along the river.

The Missouri River has been far above flood stage since May and is finally starting to recede back into its banks, although you wouldn't know it from the water surrounding U.S. Highway 34 in western Iowa. I stood on the edge of a closed gravel road and watched the flooding for a few minutes. A strong wind from the north made waves in the flood water not unlike what occurs on a large lake. It's certainly been a strange summer.

Rock Bluff, Nebraska

Cass County, Nebraska

along US Highway 34 near Pacific Junction, Iowa

Waubonsie Church, Iowa

Southern Minnesota

I have explored Minnesota once before, three years ago. That trip took me through the North Woods with its giant Paul Bunyan statues and Lake Superior shoreline. This one was less ambitious and closer to home, a drive across southwest Minnesota following the Minnesota River for much of the way.

Outside of the area around the Minnesota River (and its tributaries like the Redwood), this part of Minnesota is not at all unlike its neighboring state to the south. There are miles and miles of virtually flat farmland dotted with small towns that all have a large grain elevator of some sort towering over the surrounding landscape. Of course, as stated in Minnesota's tagline, there are small lakes seemingly everywhere a person looks.

Tyson Lake near Wood Lake, Minnesota

Fairmont, Minnesota

Blue Earth, Minnesota

Also visited: Winnebago, Truman, Lewisville, Madelia, New Ulm, Fairfax, Franklin, Redwood Falls, Echo, Vesta, Russell, Ruthton, Holland and Pipestone, Minnesota.

Up through Iowa...

With classes resuming on Monday, I felt the need to get at least one small road trip in before nearly all of my time is spent working or studying. After mulling several destinations in my mind, I took off and headed somewhere entirely different at the last minute, up through Iowa's so-called Great Lakes to Minnesota.

While the weather refused to fully cooperate, I made the best of it and explored quite a few places I had never been before.

near Kimballtown, Iowa

Manilla, Iowa

Spirit Lake at Orleans, Iowa

Also visited: Elk Horn, Irwin, Aspinwall, Vail, Westside, Wall Lake, Early, Rembrandt, Sioux Rapids, Greenville, Spencer, Milford and Spirit Lake, Iowa.

Telephonic miscellany

While certainly not the best photographic instrument the world has ever seen, a cell phone camera is almost always handy and ready for action. Here are a few random shots from so far this year...

What's in a name?

In search of no place in particular...

Some days, I wake up and feel the need to head out on a highway somewhere, the end destination somehow unimportant. Today was one of those days. I chose to head east into Iowa, ending up as far from Omaha as the wonderfully named (yet quite unimpressive in reality) Defiance, Iowa.

I've been reading William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways off-and-on for the past month or so. It's a great book, one man's travels through rural America in the early 1980's, and Heat-Moon's writing makes me want to take off cross-country even more than usual. Little day trips like this will have to suffice for the moment. School starts up again in less than a month and my wallet is even lighter than usual.

The photographs above and immediately below were both made in the small, small town of Westphalia, Iowa. The last one comes from Woodbine.

Also visited: Carson, Oakland, Hancock, Avoca, Harlan, Earling, Panama and Portsmouth, Iowa.

Nebraska City

In Nebraska City today, an old man stopped his car near where I was photographing the side of an old truck, rolled the window down, and asked me just what the hell I was doing. I told him I was just taking pictures of random things. He said that his wife still used a camera with 110 film. It surprised him when I said that was actually pretty hip at the moment. When I told him about my travels in Nebraska and the little details I like to capture, he made a sort of strange face.

"The world has more than enough pretty landscape pictures," I said. The old man thought about it a second. "I bet you'd have better luck selling them though."

We said goodbye and he drove away.

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Nebraska City is one of those places that is just plain... nice. The town's main street is sort of idyllic with mom 'n pop diners and locally owned shops, and the people are always friendly. It lies nestled in the hills above the Missouri River so the recent flooding hasn't had much effect, outside of what's shown in the photograph above.

I did notice that the business that once held a small showing of Ben Richter and I's work a few years back is no longer there. It's been replaced by yet another attempt at an antique store.

It's still hot in Nebraska, unfortunately. The heat index isn't 115 anymore, but I'm still anxious for fall to get here all the same.

Nebraska City

near Lake Waconda

Kodak Ektar 100

My prior experience with color film was largely with Fujifilm's now defunct NPS 160. It produced a low contrast image with a lot of exposure latitude, something that gave images a certain look that I was really into at the time. This look stuck with me as I began shooting ninety-three. Over time, my tastes changed (and my processing skills improved) and I've settled on a bit different look for my images.

Recently, I've been shooting with about as new of a color film that exists in this now digital world. Kodak Ektar 100 was introduced in the fall of 2008. Ektar is an unusual sort of film, a negative film that behaves a lot like a slide film. It's more forgiving than most slide films, but offers a lot more contrast than typical negative films.

I have recently found myself drawn to the Kodachrome images of photographers like William Christenberry and Saul Leiter rather than the sort of pristine perfection of someone like Stephen Shore's large format work. With this in mind, Ektar has been the perfect film for a somewhat sloppy photographer like myself to come back to. It's not as picky about exposure as slide film, but has a certain look that is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

Ektar is very sharp film with a fine grain structure. It appears to scan well from what I've seen so far, although I'm without a scanner to really dig into just how much detail is there. Even the machine scanned files look pretty good printed at 18x12, if a little short on resolution upon close examination.

I've settled on Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas for film processing and basic scanning. The quality is top notch and they offer a fast turn around. I send a few rolls out in a Priority Mail flat-rate box and I get a package back in the mail a week later. The wait has taken some getting used to, but it's been worth it. The results are great and it's immensely satisfying to carry around this tiny camera and lens that are worth less than $100 altogether.

I'm looking to debut the South Omaha photographs sometime next year, perhaps in May at Hot Shops Art Center. Stay tuned for more details, as they say.

Independence Day

This 4th of July finds me once again searching South Omaha for photographs. It's a fantastic day, not entirely too hot, and just enough clouds to make for good images. Everywhere I walked, the loud bang of a firework was never too far away and sometimes close enough to startle me. You never know how people will react to a strange bearded guy wandering around with a camera around his neck.

The project is slowly moving forward. I was happy with much of the last four rolls I got back from Dwayne's and have another three ready to go out in the mail. Above is a photograph of the back of some of the businesses along 24th Street.

At this point, I'm thinking I'd like to have a small show to reveal the work. It's been too long since I've exhibited anything.

More from this past weekend...

Coin, Iowa

Tarkio, Missouri

Farragut, Iowa

Detours make for good photographs

Fairfax, Missouri

A closed interstate detour is a bit of a peek at what life would be like if those two lane highways I like so much were all that we had to get from one place to another. In a word: crowded. Long waits at stop signs in little towns, people driving 20 miles an hour over the speed limit and making suicide passes around two or three cars at once.. It's safe that I'm glad that most of the highways I love so much are (usually) under-appreciated.

In my attempt to create my own detour, I stumbled across a few photogenic little towns in both Missouri and Iowa. The weather was also much more cooperative than yesterday. I had a much more productive day and now feel like I accomplished enough to make the trip worthwhile. This whole photography thing can be awfully frustrating sometimes.

One town that I passed through, Craig, had a sign proudly proclaiming that the town survived the 1993 floods. Unfortunately, it appears as if the town is on its way to needing to survive yet another one.

Craig, Missouri

Fremont County, Iowa

Also visited: Tarkio, Missouri. Riverton, Farragut and Sidney, Iowa.