RASMUSSEN HOTEL

Time has been cruel to this and many other places in the town of

Dubois, Idaho.

Very sharp and clear, very good shot.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Are those top story windows open?!? With all those pigeons on the roof and the windows open, I'd not want to venture inside of this old building. I like your view of it, and there are NO overhead wires to be seen anywhere in the image. I like that!

It appears that Tienda Mexicana also had a hard life. At first thought I found it strange to see this in Idaho, but then I thought of potatoes and it made sense.

Our past is crumbling right before our eyes. Lucky for people like you who capture the images that are our heritage. An eloquent picture.

From my observations, this town is now largely Hispanic and very economically depressed. I don't believe a single building on the main drag was still occupied. The photo with the travel trailer and the stairway that you commented upon earlier is facing this building.

I don't take these out of much sense of preserving the past, but more because I am compulsively curious about every aspect of human habitation. Can you imagine just how much human activity has occurred in this simple building over the years? It is beyond comprehension. I swear to you I can envision a 4th of July parade going down the street in front of this hotel even as I write these words.

 

No, I cannot afford nor do I desire treatment. I shall live as contentedly as possible with my disease.

I visited your portfolio earlier last year when I was getting started on pnet, and I commented not on the quality of your images--when I say 'quality', I mean 'quality' by pnet definition, which is really pixel count--but back then I commented on the quality of your VISION, which is an uncommon trait.

 

I have to confess that I haven't kept up with your work as much as I should, but this image, and the accompanying conversation really grabs me. I, too, have lived in Middle America--if there is such a place--in Michigan and Kentucky. I once took a Greyhound from New York City to Seattle, Washington, and again from Lansing, Michigan, through Chicago, to San Francisco. In both of those trips, I got to appreciate not just the vastness of the land itself, but the splendour and vistas therein.

 

This house could be anywhere from Gary, Indiana to Enterprise, Kansas, to Cheyene, Wyoming, to Sioux City, Iowa, to Boise, Idaho, or even Martinez, California. I once came close to buying a HIGH SCHOOL of all things! in Topeka, Kansas, for peanuts. It was advertized on Ebay, and nobody bought it.

 

The country is crumbling; the towns are becoming ghost towns, the factories packing up and moving overseas, and while the Wall Street crowd continue to yammer about an 'economic boom', we the people understand how cruel this hoax is, because we KNOW a horse from an as*s as they say in the Islands.

 

I think photographers like you, who have an eye out for that which is relevant around you, preserve not just a tradition of Americana, but the tradition of the photographer as storyteller and asker of questions. You are in the tradition of Eudora Welty, Walker Evans, Pirkle Jones, Dorothea Lange and Paul Strand. Your work has relevance beyond the edges of the print, or the pixels in this instance.

What a great commentary. I mean that. Not because of the praise you have given me (oh, yes, I do enjoy that too), but because you really have summed it up so extremely well. You have made my evening for sure. We as a nation have been so preternaturally blessed with the grand vistas and the natural resources, but like many a great nation, culture and civilization, I fear it is slipping from our grasp at a greater rate of acceleration each year. And all the while we have so little we can do to reverse the direction. I guess maybe my photos are in response to that frustration. You have made me think rather deeply on this subject, and for that I am deeply grateful.

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed eavesdropping on your conversations. Besides excellent photography there are a number of entertaining raconteurs and commentators on P.net and I must say I enjoy their observations every bit as much as I do their photos. Emmanuel, I thought your words were right on the money. Having spent the past 20 years in Japan I have developed an expatriate's point of view and believe me my feelings about America and the American Way have been drastically altered in that time. If you watch some of the movies of Frank Capra from the 40's (It's A Wonderful Life; Mr.Smith Goes To Washington; Meet John Doe, etc.) you'll be struck by how much the thinking of Americans has changed in the intervening years. The optimism and feeling of community has faded and is vanishing along with the small towns, the old concept of neighborhoods and the mom and pop stores. The villains in Capra's movies - Big Business, Big Politics and those who prize the accumulation of wealth over all else - are precisely those who are determining the course of our country today. Emmanuel is right about your sense of vision, David, and I think it is rooted in the understanding that for all our progress, something irretrievable has been lost.

Great point. I too, enjoy some of the commentary almost as much as the photo exchange. And you are always welcome to join in and express your opinion on any of my pages. Though I have not watched the movies you mention, I think I know the genre, and I think I agree with you on your interpretation of the mindset then and now. Instead of working for a future, most of our collective efforts (charity, government at all levels, and most of our institutions) are engaged in putting out the fires. Dealing with the homeless, trying to patch up an infrastructure that has long ago seen its best days, educating the masses in order that they may answer all of the test questions, but none of life's conundrums, watching our wealth of human and economic resources being accumulated by the few, or squandered in ghastly purposeless wars. A climate that may be beyond repair and our continued actions that show money is more important than our environment. Maybe that's why I do photography. It's really all I can do.

 

And, then again, I hope I'm as wrong as can be. That's not the legacy I wish to visit upon my grandchildren.

David, according to my monitor you have set the contrast wrong. On my screen I have improved this (to my eye) 100% by changing the contrast with the histogram. Your version is also not the way you'd print in a dark room. All the proper information is in the foto. The exposure is correct. The filter is correct. I used the histogram in PS. I moved the white side up to zone 7 where it should be. I moved the brick from down to zone 4 where to me it looks much better and the detail in the white wall now pops out. In other words I made the whites whiter and the darks darker. I can email or post my image if you want. I cannot promise it will look the same on your screen. Either way it is your photo not mine.

Let me first chastise you and then thank you. When you are dealing with me on Pnet, it is always okay to upload my images, your images, or anything else that facilitates communication. So don't be shy about that (at least with me). I remember telling you that I thought you could teach me a lot. And I think you can, and do when you comment or when I look at your images.

 

Having said that, let me state the obvious. I am not a very technically adept photographer. I work at it some, but my goal is not to have technical masterpieces that have no soul. If I could have both technical expertise and images with meaning, that would be great. But given a choice of one over the other, I want something that speaks my thoughts. Have you ever seen a person with ten thousand dollars worth of photo equipment that has never made a worthwhile image? Yes, I know that is a highly subjective statement, but I think you know what I mean.

 

I would be very pleased to have you tell me what technique you would use and how you would improve it, and what it should look like in your mind. That would be a great help. Do not misunderstand this, but the reason I love so many of your images is much more for the human drama the pathos, the "authenticity," the grit, the sense of reality they convey, than for the technical expertise. But I know that you cannot convey that drama if you don't know how to put the image to paper (or screen) properly. While I guard my vision jealously, I'm open to what you have to say.