Downtown DHS Photo Project

For the Desert Hot Springs Historical Society and for the benefit of the whole city, of course, I've started on a project to photograph the streetscapes and all building facades in the downtown Desert Hot Springs area. City Manager Rick Daniels is promising great changes there in the next 12 months and I have no reason to doubt him. The purpose of the project is to both document what is there now and what changes occur. I'm not focusing on only older or more interesting buildings. I'm simply taking pictures of everything.

The highlighted area in this map shows you where I'm going to be focusing initially.

In order to make the photos easily available to everyone and to allow everyone to contribute information on every photo, I've created a new account at Flickr called Downtown DHS. Anyone can look at all sizes and copy all the photos. I've given each of them a Creative Commons license rather than a strict copyright. The photos can be re-used by anyone for non-commercial purposes so long as attribution is given to "Downtown DHS" or the "DHS Historical Society." (Creative Commons details here.)

If you want to add comments or tags to any photos, you are welcome to do so. However, you must be registered at Flickr to do so. Registration at Flickr is free. It requires you to have or create a Yahoo ID which is not difficult - when Yahoo is working, which is most of the time. Those who don't want to register at Flickr are welcome to send comments and additional info to me at either RonsLog@rbgilbert.com or DowntownDHS@yahoo.com.

I especially want to hear from you if you spot a mistake. Also, if you have information about the history, uses, ownership, et cetera, of anything I've photographed, you can add that to a photo as either a comment or tags, or just email the info to me.

I'm labeling each photo with the street address. Each photo has been placed on a map, as well. I don't especially like how Yahoo maps work on Flickr, but it's what we have to work with, and it does have some clumsy functionality.

As I write this, I'm still using a free account at Flickr, which is limited. However, when I get a paid account (only $24.95/year) there will be no limit on the number of photos in the account, plus people will be able to download the original full-resolution photos too. Perhaps some good citizen will pop for that $24.95, or maybe we'll just wait awhile and I'll pay for it myself.

If anyone has photos to contribute to the project, talk to me, or just send them to me. If they're appropriate, I'll add them.

Some people may think these straightforward photos make DHS look grittier than they might like. Others will see the city they know and love. Samples: