
Night-time in America's small towns - eclipse31
http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-39040237
======
dcolgan
I'm attempting to start do the whole solopreneur online make your own business
passive income thing, and it hit me one day that I was spending a whole lot of
money in expensive places to sit in front of my computer and type. So this
year I moved back to smalltown Indiana. I have a relatively giant apartment
above a storefront in one of these small town main streets. It is mostly quiet
and costs a whole $360 a month.

There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple
of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from
a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am
close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet
here is better than many large cities I've been to.

My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it
would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an
opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.

Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the
friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly
vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.

The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down
the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and
several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small
towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly
working for me so far.

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vogt
This was wonderful. I love small town America. I grew up in a town of about
3000 and currently live in one that is population 30k or so. Popular sentiment
in a lot of tech circles would have you believe that these places are solely
filled with backwards, racist people. That can be true, but often times isn't.
Small town life in the US lies on a very big spectrum.

~~~
pizzetta
The other belief is that these people live in lost provinces far from the all
important metropolises and long for being able to move to a place with
meaning-ignoring that most of existence that's how people lived in rural
communities.

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treve
Having grown up in a country where nationalism kind of harks back to nazism,
it's always weird for me to see all the flags everywhere. It's just not
something I can get used to, even after all these years of seeing US flags
everywhere.

~~~
rayiner
People have a really basic need to bond over shared characteristics.
Throughout the world, countries are glued together based on ethnicity,
religion, or language. E.g. Pakistan separated from India over religion, and
Bangladesh separated from Pakistan over language.

Americans' proclivity for displaying the flag is a way of expressing unity in
a country that doesn't have a common ethnicity, religion, or language.

Nationalism also facilitates integration in a country that has tons of
immigration. My family is from Bangladesh, where group membership is
determined by ethnicity. A white American could move to Bangladesh at a young
age, speak the language fluently, marry into a Bangladeshi family, but he'd
never _be_ Bangladeshi. Here, you step off the plane, put that flag up in
front of your house, and _boom_ you're American.

~~~
pm90
> E.g. Pakistan separated from India over religion, and Bangladesh separated
> from Pakistan over language.

Minor nit, it was more "culture" or "ethnicity" than language, although
language was perhaps the most defining feature. It seems that the Punjabi
Pakistani's looked down upon their (then) countrymen of Bengali heritage.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Come on! Isn't the defining separating feature that huge chunk of land called
India? :p

~~~
pm90
I can't tell if you're insinuating that India split the country...yes, once
the War started, India did help Bangladesh gain independence. Prior to that
however, it was the West Pakistani's who were responsible for incredible
atrocities against the Bengali people living in (now) Bangladesh[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Blood#The_Blood_telegra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Blood#The_Blood_telegram)

~~~
aaron-lebo
Well, it was an admittedly lame joke about how the biggest division between
Pakistan and Bangladesh is literally India.

Had India not been separating the two, it would have been much easier for West
Pakistan to use repression or other means to hold down Bangladesh as long as
they'd like.

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throwanem
Regardless of your opinion on the subject matter, I can unreservedly recommend
this piece as a sublime example of the photographer's art.

~~~
rndmio
I disagree, the poor quality and bad HDR really detracted from the images for
me, they were painful to look at.

~~~
Diederich
Totally honest question here: can you be very specific about what caused these
photos to be painful for you to look at? I have no formal photographic
training but I have always taken a lot of pictures, and I've been told that
some of them are good. I do know what HDR is, gleaned from various hacker news
posts over the years.

What is painful about these photos, to you?

~~~
Isamu
It's funny, now it's called HDR (for high dynamic range) but really you are
compressing the "dynamic range" to make details visible that otherwise would
be washed out or too dark.

This has been a regular part of photography from the darkroom days,
manipulating the exposure time, masking parts to selectively reduce exposure,
"burning in" other parts. Especially with BW photography.

The sort of other-worldly crispness, details, and groomed highlights can be
upsetting to some people. But it sets this type of photography apart from say,
documentary images and instead tries for a kind of art.

Not everybody is familiar with this sort of photography.

~~~
ska
The "high dynamic range" refers to the input range, not the output range, so
it isn't a misnomer as you suggest.

This also what separates it a bit from techniques like masking which don't
change the underlying range available, but rather tweaking the exposure in an
area. Dodging and burning are dark room techniques, which is a whole different
kettle of fish.

As you note though, people used to do similar things with exposure bracketing
in analog days - it's just a lot easier with digital.

Fundamentally you can get some pretty similar results with selective lighting.
After all you are locally changing the effective represented photon density
hitting your receptor, either way.

~~~
Isamu
> it isn't a misnomer as you suggest

Just saying HDR should refer to the process. The output photo, as you say,
only has a normal dynamic range, compressed from the inputs.

~~~
ska
meh; It's an informative name that absolutely does refer to the process, and
gives you some information.

Your preferred approach isn't objectively any better (all kinds of processes
could result in higher dynamic range outputs, some of which are arguably
"cheating").

So what we have is a reasonable choice between imperfect alternatives that are
mostly equivalent - but that choice is made now and far better to get on with
it than quibble about it.

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andyjohnson0
Very atmospheric, and reminded me of this [1] from a few months ago.

[1] Striking Portraits of Lonely Cars in 1970s New York
[http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/striking-portraits-
of-l...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/striking-portraits-of-lonely-
cars-in-1970s-new-york)

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oftenwrong
Many of those charming small town main streets like the ones in some of the
photos, and the independently owned businesses along them, are in decline, if
not already dead. Wal-mart and other big, chain businesses, often located down
the highway, are getting all the business, so the small businesses in town
cannot survive. Recently, I saw an incredible video about a main street in
Mississippi that was basically dead, but has been resurrected on a fairly
modest budget:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA)

~~~
empath75
Yeah I was going to say. All those quaint American towns that look like they
came out of a time capsule are that way because they've been in decline since
those buildings were built and nobody has invested money into new buildings or
businesses.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
... or the locals realized that the buildings were beautiful as is and didn't
change much. I know a number of towns around here that probably don't look
much different than they did 50 years ago and they're thriving.

One of the nice things about small towns is that there's usually available
real estate to put up new buildings without tearing down the old ones.

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drivingmenuts
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how utterly empty small towns feel
late at night. I grew up in a rural area but have lived in larger urban areas
since going to college.

Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong,
there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a
24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely
abandoned.

During the day, there's people and life and things happening, but at night,
you want to pull your jacket tighter and hunker down a bit, maybe.

~~~
Sorry_Rum_Ham
Once, while on a road trip, the wife and I ended up walking around Roswell,
New Mexico at 2:00AM on a Tuesday. The town was completely lifeless as you
described. We didn't see a single person for hours. The dark, empty town
coupled with the alien/UFO decor literally everywhere you looked is still one
of the more surreal things I've experienced. I have sort of a warm nostalgia
for it, though.

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JoeAltmaier
I live in a place like those. Its great photography, but the mundane subjects
make it hard to get into.

Trying to locate any of those, I settled on one with an unusual street sign -
'Coolbaugh St'. There are 2 in the US, both in Pennsylvania. Neither has that
building along it! Strange

~~~
digler999
It's in iowa

[https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz](https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ok that's why its all so familiar! I'm in Iowa too; have driven by there many
times.

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eddyg
Fantastic images. I wish each photo included the city and state where it was
taken for context.

~~~
digler999
Looks like Tonopah, Nevada for at least two of them:

The garage photo:
[https://goo.gl/maps/kDAs2buEaaL2](https://goo.gl/maps/kDAs2buEaaL2)

The car sticking out of the earth:

[https://goo.gl/maps/JuFdKETPtgw](https://goo.gl/maps/JuFdKETPtgw)

[http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-car-
forest-...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-car-forest-of-
the-last-church)

Two more appear to be in Red Oak, Iowa. I googled for "red oak printing" that
is visible in one of the photos, which led to coolbaugh lane on the map, which
is also visible in another photo.

[https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz](https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz)

~~~
eddyg
Thanks for the sleuthing! A map of his 7000 mile trip[1] would definitely have
been interesting, at least to me.

[1] [http://danielfreemanphotography.co.uk/introduction-usa-
serie...](http://danielfreemanphotography.co.uk/introduction-usa-series-
follow/)

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thecity2
Where it's never gotten past 1955.

