Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: elevator

Superior Harbor. Like most of the photos from this cruise, this one had some exposure issues; fixing those made things pretty grainy. I do like the composition, though.

Now a farm market and gathering place . Portland, Michigan.

One last Bibble/Andy experiment with this photo. This time I tried to bring out the clouds, at the expense of other detail. We're imitating Fomapan 100 printed on Agfa's Multicontrast Premium, using filter 4. That filter's doing most of the work. Looks--fairly accurately, actually--like we're approaching sunset. Superior Wisconsin.

The same photo; continuing my Bibble/Andy experiments with a well-composed but ill-exposed photo. This one's as though it was Agfapan 25 (ha! way too grainy) printed on Kodak Portra; I've also made some effort to brighten things up a bit. This brings out detail on the elevator, but costs detail in other places--particularly the clouds in the sky. A look at the map reveals that my lens has dramatically foreshortened the view, hiding the fact that the elevator's at the far end of a deep slip, most of a half-mile away. But the effect's quite dramatic. Superior Harbor, again, of course.

Thought I'd play with Bibble's Andy plugin a little. This one's fairly conventional--imitating Tri-X printed on Agfa Multicontrast paper. Superior, Wisconsin.

Sunfield's about four miles down the way from Mulliken (Michigan, in both cases). The two towns are about the same size, and both live mostly between the tracks (CSX, these days) and highway M-43. Historically both are grain elevator towns and provided services to local farmers. The biggest physical difference between the villages is that our town spills over to the north of the railroad, while in Sunfield the rails define the town's northern boundry. As this photo shows.

Another 1988 photo of the grain elevator complex in Springport, Michigan. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Potterville, Michigan.

One last look at Springport, Michigan's old New York Central depot before we go on our way. 1988. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Springport's depot is, and apparently always was, nestled in the local grain dealer's complex. Here's the first of a couple photos of that complex as it looked in 1988, according to my little Minolta.

Manitowoc, Wisconsin, shot from SS Badger. A Photoshop (Elements) experiment.

The tracks are still here, but the trains no longer stop, and much of the elevator complex has been demolished. Mulliken was a farm town for about a century. There was a grocery store, a lumberyard, a hardware store. A church, a school, a barber, a library, a beauty shop, a couple bars, a restaurant that served breakfast. A gas station. A post office. And this grain elevator. The lumberyard was already gone when I moved here in 1991. This feed, grain, & seed operation closed two or three years after I took these photos. The hardware failed around 2000. The school's been gone for years, as have the hair cutters. Boyer's no longer serves gasoline, though John can still fix your pickup. The grocery's evolved into a party store, and Farmers Tavern's been a full-service restaurant since the 80s. In many ways, now, we've become a rather distant Lansing suburb. We aren't entirely commuters--a surprising number of my neighbors work as plumbers, and these days our biggest local business is a general contractor. But the farmers ship grain, and buy seed, at Sunfield , or Grand Ledge, or Woodbury. I miss 'em.

New Year's morning, 1992; Mulliken Elevator across the field through a snowstorm. I got up early and took a number of photographs around the neighborhood. This from behind my house, looking north toward downtown Mulliken. As you can see, it was basically open field for half a mile. No longer true. Been experimenting with my scanner (and with VueScan ). I'm not entirely happy with the results, but this one came out nicely. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

After they tore half of it out.

Even with half the structures removed, the Mulliken Elevator's an interesting complex of buildings. Never was a big operation, but it's the largest thing in this town.

June 1995: I drove downtown to check the mail after work and noticed this interesting train parked behind the Mulliken Elevator. Grabbed the camera, wasted a roll of film, went home. Joan, who'd just joined the household a few days before, was a little curious about why it took half an hour to check the mail.... Regarding that crane: It's CSX (nee L&N) 41422, built by American Crane and Equipment (they apparently now go by ACECO). Seems to me they were using this big crane for bridge repairs, but it's a distant memory at this point. All the buildings (silos) in this photo are now gone. The siding's still there, but overgrown and mostly unused.... Camera: Chinon Genesis III

Down the end of our street, in 1995, from when the town still made some pretense of supporting the neighboring farmers. No longer. Much of this complex has long-since been dismantled; what remains has been repurposed.

Mulliken, Michigan; at the end of my street. Now functioning as something other than a grain elevator. I miss the long lines of tractors, trucks, and trailers that used to take over our town at planting and harvest.