Showing posts with label harbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label harbor. Show all posts

Thursday, February 21, 2019

At the Port of Vicksburg (B&W film)

Many people today forget (or did not know) that Vicksburg is still a major river shipping port. Unlike the 1800s, when the river passed right in front of town and riverboats unloaded at the waterfront, most port activity today happens at the industries and refineries at Haining and Industrial Roads. The river activity is out of sight unless you specifically go there.
Yazoo Canal and Port of Vicksburg in 1997, view northwest, Nikon N90 camera
In the 1997 photograph above, the aircraft is over North Washington Street and the view is to the northwest. The curved road is Haining. The industries are to its left or south, while the land to the right is mostly forest and some farmland. The port is on artificial land and is high enough to be above flood waters. But the forest to the north is hardwood bottomland and does occasionally flood. The road turning off to the right (upper left of the photograph) is Industrial Drive. You can drive out on the roads (I ride my bicycle here regularly), but you cannot enter the facilities or walk out to the water's edge. This is a contrast to the 1980s, when security was much more casual and you could walk around more freely.
City of Vicksburg water treatment plant, view approx. north, Nikon F3 camera
We will take a quick tour from east to west
Former Anderson Tully wood processing plant, now Vicksburg Forest Products LLC (click any picture to enlarge)
The wood mill is surrounded by its own levee. In the high water of 2017, we canoed along the levee. The plant inside remained in operation.
Vicksburg Southern Railroad (VSOR) tracks
City of Vicksburg water wells
The city's water wells are north of Haining road. As of January 2019, the woods here were flooded.
Mississippi Lime, 1543 Haining Road
Ergon BioFuels, 1833 Haining Road
Ergon BioFuels refined corn into ethanol, I assume mostly for use in motor fuels. The plant was scheduled to close in December of 2018, but I am not sure of the status. Often, tens of 18-wheeler semi trucks would park along the road, awaiting their turns to enter the plant and unload corn. The blackbirds liked the spilled corn kernels.
Vicksburg Southern Railroad (VSOR) tracks, view west
Ergon Ethanol
Rail cars can access all of the port via Vicksburg Southern Railroad's (VSOR) tracks. In the last couple of years, workmen have been replacing ties and adding new bedding. The tank cars above are at the ethanol plant. The refinery has a bright orange shunting truck/locomotive to push rail cars around. It has rubber tires so it can drive across a parking lot.
Falco Lime
This mountain of lime, which looks somewhat like a sand dune, grows and shrinks depending on the number of trucks that come and haul the material away. The rails along here have also been repaired recently. I am not sure if rail cars bring in the lime or if it comes from barges.
This is a crop from the original full-size TIFF file of the negative above. I am impressed with the resolution of this little 1957-vintage 50mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar lens. This was hand-held with a yellow filter.

The 2018 photographs are from Ilford Delta 100 film exposed through my 1957-vintage Voigtländer Vito BL camera with 50mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar lens, most with a yellow filter. This is a coated Tessar-type lens with 4 elements in 3 groups. It is unit focus, meaning the entire lens group moves as a unit (as opposed to front element focus). You can read my review of the Vito BL at the 35MMC blog. It has remarkable optical quality for such a simple optical design. I scanned the film with a Plustek 7600i film scanner.
Voigtländer Vito BL camera

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Our Man in Havana 2: On the Waterfront

Havana is a spectacular seaport. Facing the Strait of Florida, the Spanish knew in the 1500s that a fortified city here could control the strait and protect their treasure fleets before they set sail across the Atlantic to return to Spain. And being only 90 miles from the Florida Keys, Havana became a convenient travel destination for Americans in the 20th century. During the Prohibition era, Havana was wet, fun, naughty, and nasty. What happened in Havana stayed in Havana. Remember the musical, "Guys and Dolls"? The gambler, Sky, takes the dowdy Sarah to Havana, and after a number of milkshakes containing Bacardi, she really begins to enjoy herself as well as Mr. Sky.
This is the view of Habana Viejo (Old Havana) from the east side of the harbor channel, from below the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (El Morro fortress). There was some sort of smoky fire burning in the city, unless it was a factory spewing smoke. Air pollution is a serious problem in Havana with all the old cars and industrial sources of smog.
We crossed the harbor by ferry boat (see the previous article) from Casa Blanca to Havana Vieja. I was surprised to see dilapidated wharfs, clearly unused for decades. Three large wharfs are attached to a huge terminal building, known as the Terminal Sierra Maestra. The northernmost wharf has been restored and serves cruise ship passengers, but the southern ones are unrestored. The photograph shows the Santa Clara, but in faded letters you can see "Port of Havana Docks Co,"
The Sierra Maestra terminal was built between 1910 and 1914, a period when Cuba generated tremendous wealth by selling sugar to the United States. A crane barge with bucket was moored next to the building, and I saw some new sheet pile along the shore. The building with the domes across the street is the Sacra Iglesia Catedral Ortodoxa de San Nicolás, the only Greek Orthodox church in Cuba. 
A sign describes some of the renovation that is underway. I tried to enter the building at what looked like an unused door, but a guard shoed me out (they do that to me a lot). 
The restored part of the terminal is quite handsome. The tower with the clay tiles reminds me of railroad stations in the US Southwest built by the Santa Fe Railroad in the late 1800s or early 1900s. 
Che Guevara is here, as he is almost everywhere else in Cuba. Alberto Korda took the iconic photograph on March 5, 1960, at a funeral service for Cubans workers who were killed when a ship carrying arms for Cuban revolutionaries exploded in Havana harbor. Korda used a Leica M2 and 90mm lens on Plus-X film. Che is a martyr of the Revolution. Granma, the "Órgano oficial del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba" wrote, "Che, Cuban citizen by birth. Since 1959, the Cuban people have considered Che one of their own, and the heroic guerilla responded in kind." Click the link to read the rest of the article. It's amazing what skilful propaganda can do.
The color photos above are from a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with 18mm and 27mm Fuji lenses.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Time Warp: Hong Kong in 1950

Dear Readers, I recently scanned some of the family negatives and slides. To continue with the Hong Kong theme of the last two articles, here are some scenes from 1950.

A short history will help set the stage. During World War II, Japanese Imperial forces occupied Hong Kong. The occupation was brutal, and, due to starvation, emigration, and mass killings, the population dropped from 1.2 million pre-war to only 600,000 by 1945. Because of its strategic position in the South China Sea, Britain reoccupied Hong Kong after the war, even though most European powers were slowly divesting themselves of their colonial possessions. From 1945-1949, Hong Kong was a rather sleepy outpost of the Empire. But in 1949, Mao Zedong's communist forces occupied all of the mainland, forcing Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government to flee to Formosa (now Taiwan). Soon, huge numbers of Chinese fled to Hong Kong. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Barbara W. Tuchman (1972) provides an excellent background to our difficult relations with China in the pre-war and WWII era.
The photograph above shows Victoria Harbour in 1950 with American aircraft carriers at anchor. Kowloon is across the water on the peninsula. The American fleet was likely intended to send a message to Mao to not dare mess with Hong Kong. This picture may have been taken from Peak Tower, which can be reached with a tram that ascends the mountain.
This is approximately the same scene in 2014. But Hong Kong is no longer a sleepy outpost!
Back to 1950, when the streets were relatively quiet and the buildings mostly less than 4 floors high. This may be the Tsim Sha Tsui residential area. Note the Art Deco design elements. My Hong Kong friend said it is interesting that the sign says "Cuba Dance School."
This may be Lai Chi Kok, at the terminus of bus line 6.
My friend noted the signs which say "Shanghai tailors," "Shanghai herbal doctors," etc. This might be North Point, where many Shanghinese gathered in the 1950's. Notice the cars drove on the left, a legacy of the British development of the road network. That is still true today, while on the mainland, cars drive on the right (as in USA and most of Europe).
This is the Tsim Sha Tsui sports field in Kowloon. The famous clock tower is in the distance on the right.
Repulse Bay is on the south side of Hong Kong Island.
This may be Po Chong Wan, a narrow waterway between Ap Lei Chou Island and the main Hong Kong Island. Today, there are yachts, pleasure craft, and shipyards here.
An early-style selfie. Note the necktie and the British-style knee socks, all very proper for a tropical climate. Recall, once upon a time, travelers dressed well for touring. Even I recall wearing a jacket and necktie in London, Vienna, Moscow, and other capitals.
Jump ahead 64 years, and selfies are still popular. She even has an appropriate tropical hat.

The 1950 colour photograph was taken on Kodachrome film with a Leica IIIC camera and 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens (still in use 65 years later). The black and white frames were taken on Kodak Panatomic-X film with a Canon IIB rangefinder camera and its 50mm ƒ/1.9 Serenar lens. The Canon was one of the early products of the Japanese industrial recovery after World War II. My dad took these photographs during a long trip from Guam to New York, via Hong Kong, India, Egypt, and Europe.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

On the Waterfront - Piraeus, Greece

Piraeus (in Greek: Πειραιάς Pireás) is the port of Athens. Piraeus is a separate municipality from Athens, but the two are now merged in one sprawling urban area. But it still has a different feel, that of a seaport, as opposed to a cosmopolitan capital with a sophisticated veneer. If you have ever taken a ferryboat to Crete or some of the islands south of the mainland, you probably embarked from Piraeus. During my last trip to Greece, I only had time for a short visit, and here are some observations.
If you come in from downtown Athens, you probably take the SPAP train, which is now part of the Metro. The tracks were laid in 1882 as part of the Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways or SPAP (Greek: Σιδηρόδρομοι Πειραιώς-Αθηνών-Πελοποννήσου or Σ.Π.Α.Π.). This was the first electric metro in Europe, quite progressive for a poor country that had only enjoyed independence for half a century.
The station has been restored and retains its late-1800s architecture. But today, you use a coin-operated machine to buy your ticket rather than these queues.
Walk across the street (without getting squashed), and there is the port. In the morning, this inner basin is lined with ferries and it is quite the scene of lorries, jostling people, and lost tourists.
The Library of Congress has some historical Piraeus photographs in their holdings. This is a view of Piraeus taken between 1850 and 1880, from an albumen print.
This is a view of Piraeus from the sea, approx. 1900-1920, scanned from a 4×5" nitrate negative.
This is a 1907 scene of "Modern shipping in the ancient Athenian harbor at Piraeus, Greece," half of a stereo card from the American Stereoscopic Company.
Stevedores were loading supplied on an American Red Cross ship, from an undated 5×7" glass negative. These supplies might be heading to the war zone in World War I.
This a 1922 print showing, "A section of "barber's row" Enterprising refugees among the hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians who fled from Asia Minor to Greece have set up stools, boxes, chairs and everything that can be sat on in a long row on the quay in Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, and shave and cut the hair of customers." TIFF files of these and other fascinating photographs can be downloaded from the Library of Congress web page.
In 2015, I did not see any outdoor barbers, but there is a fish and produce market. It was rather quiet on this September weekday, actually rather dull. Much more interesting is the big Central Market on Athenas Street in downtown Athens (click the link for details). 
I can never resist photographing the sophisticated local ladies. These lovelies were on Sotiros Diros, a pedestrian street lined with cafes, fashion goods, and telephone shops. The ambiance was clean and reasonably prosperous, certainly not reflecting the stories of economic decay that we hear in the US media. Piraeus is worth a visit, even if you are not planning to board a ferry.

I met an American, a former New York hair dresser, who retired to Piraeus. He said you can live relatively comfortably on US Social Security in Greece. Interesting idea....

All 2015 photographs taken with a Panasonic Lumix G3 digital camera, with RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software. The ladies are out-of-camera jpeg files. The map is from ESRI ArcMap software.