Spring in DC, part II

 And… here’s the other set of photos from my spring trip to DC. These are from a short excursion we took to Point Lookout State Park, about 2 hours into Maryland. The dog was very eager to have her picture taken–my mother, not so much–but I think I got some good shots of both of them. A rocky beach in the colder months may not be the best place for swimming, but it’s perfect for photos!

Rocky II
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Spring in DC, part I

As soon as spring break rolled around, I packed my bags and headed straight for DC. I had plenty of time to see old friends and old places, and to help my mother move into her new house(!). Change was in the air in more ways than one, and spring in DC is always glorious.  Although the cherry blossoms were still only buds, I was determined to photograph them anyway–and also to get some shots of those more chaotic (though just as photogenic) parts of the city.

[If you want photos of the cherries in full glorious blossom, I do have a whole post-full from last year that you can check out. The post is doubtless buried deep within the blog feed, but here’s a link: http://roseblack.net/2018/05/15/cherry-blossom-adventures/ ]

The photo set I’m uploading with this post is pretty thin, mainly because the bulk of this site is already DC streetscapes. Right now, I’d rather spend my time preparing photo sets that are a bit more unique. In that vein, I have at least three other promising sets I’ve been tinkering with, including the part II of this post (Remember? This was part I?). I’m also way overdue for an “around Champaign” post–I’ve been living here months now, for chrissakes! Honestly, I have enough decent photos sitting around on memory cards for two or three good-sized “around Champaign” sets, maybe more. I just have to get my sad ass to work on the editing/writing/uploading side of things!

Looks like there really wasn’t much to write about this post–maybe its purpose is more to whet one’s palate for part II than anything else? Or something like that.

If all goes according to plan, part ll will be a set of beach photos taken on a day-adventure outside DC. Featured critters include my mother, the darling dog, and one dubiously visible bald eagle.

~to be continued~

[Part II will be up within a week or so. Probably.]

 

Tall
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Two Trips to Saint Louis

I’d never been to St. Louis prior to my move to the midwest, but since then I’ve visited twice and discovered an odd love for the city. It’s my favorite kind of city to photograph: the kind full of variety among its neighborhoods and its citizens, but in a way that manages not to feel completely artificially dictated. St. Louis has so much texture–in both the literal and the metaphorical sense–and that makes it a real treat to visit and photograph.

During my first visit–last October, I believe–the weather remained insistently drizzly and overcast. To my own surprise, I didn’t mind. It made for an atmospheric stroll through the landscape of old factories and crumbling asphalt and chain link fencing trimmed in barbed-wire’s loops and lines. But I was still glad to arrive to far better weather on my second visit, if only to add some variety to the photos. The mood of a city can change so drastically depending on the weather–I guess that’s not exactly a novel discovery on my part, but in this instance it seemed to hit home anew.

I realized after my first visit that I had nowhere near enough good shots to make a full post of it. I suspect that I might’ve been a little too busy antique shopping and sipping local absinthe (absinthe tends to show up in the most unexpected places, doesn’t it?) to pay as much attention to the photography bit as I should have.

But the solution to that problem was a simple one–I would just have to go back and get more photos! So, as usual seizing any excuse to travel, I picked a recent weekend to retrace my steps (tire tracks?) to St. Louis. This time, my mother (a fabulously talented digital artist in her own right–just check out ledablack.com) was in from DC for a visit to Champaign, so we decided to drive up to St. Louis together. We both brought our cameras, and we made a very satisfying mother-daughter photography trip/emotional bonding experience/goth-clothing thrift-store-scavenger-hunt out of it. And I returned home with just enough new photos to make a neat little 2-trip compilation post.

Art-Attacked by Vines
Don'cha know there ain't no devil…
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On the Road in New Mexico, Plus Some Life Updates

Note: this is a very long post, and the image gallery is all the way at its bottom. If you don’t want to read the post and only want the pictures, just keep scrolling.

Hello again. It really has been a long time now, hasn’t it? What, five months? Six? Though I don’t know if it matters, as to my knowledge no one reads this habitually.

There’ve been some major changes in Rose-land (Rose-ville?) over these months, and I like to tell myself that’s why I haven’t been keeping up with this site–or with my photography business. For one, I moved again, across the country this time. I live in central Illinois now–and it looks like this is where I’m going to be for a while.

It’s taken some time to adjust to the Midwest, and to reconcile how the identity of my photography business will have to change now that I’m here. So much of what I’ve done up till now relies on a sense of place, and that place is DC. I still have family in DC so I’ll be able to visit regularly, but I’m gonna have to broaden my horizons, explore my new hometown a little. Try to figure out how I can turn this–excuse the melodrama–“suburban purgatory” into art. I’m sure I’ll be able to…

I’ll have come up with a new tagline for this site too, I suppose. Can’t exactly stay “photos from DC and beyond,” can I? And “photos from Champaign Illinois and beyond” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Another big change–this one more on the optimistic side: I got myself enrolled in a couple classes at the local community college, including an auto mechanics course. I’m hoping I can continue in this vein and eventually, earn my ASE certification. I love playing at the whole “artist” thing, but it would mean a lot to also have a mechanic’s income.

***

Finally, to the photos–the real purpose of this website. Late last summer, I embarked on a sprawling trip across New Mexico’s back highways with my wonderful father, Rolf. Both my parents are Albuquerque natives, and although I am certainly no native, I did get to know New Mexico pretty intimately during yearly childhood (and later adulthood) visits. Albuquerque is among my favorite cities in the world, and New Mexico might be my favorite state in the USA. This visit was especially fabulous, and the icing on the cake is all the gorgeous photos I got out of it.

We alighted amongst scenery new and familiar as we criss-crossed the state, from hiking up Sandia peak in Albuquerque, to soaking up the hot springs in Santa Fe, to camping in Chaco Canyon.

We drove through miles of lonely reservation land, and slept nights in the dusty motorcourts of Taos and Farmington.

We visited (during the off-season) the little sanctuary in Chimayo that plays yearly host to a famous Catholic pilgrimage.

We visited (during fire season–and during the fires) the spot in the Valles Caldera where we’d scattered my grandmother’s ashes years before.

We took windy mountain roads past highway graveyards, and right up to mountain cliffs so high you can see the lightening below you.

We braved a hike under the midday sun in the surreal, sweltering Bisti Badlands desert, and we drank watery coffee out of hand-made mugs in the Cerrillos souvenir trading post.

And then we boarded a 737, and we flew across the Rocky Mountains, and we landed right back in Washington, DC.

A Forest
Photographing a forest is easy. Photographing a forest WELL is much, much harder.
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Half a Post About Boulder

I spent a few very enjoyable days in Denver and Boulder back in–alright, a couple months ago now. Although the trip was fun, it rained pretty much the whole time, so I didn’t get much opportunity to take photos. Actually, that’s part of the reason I put off sorting through the photos I did take for so long: I was convinced there just weren’t any good ones in the bunch. And, well… I was kind of right. I decided to put a few of them up anyway, because I did spend a chunk of time taking and editing them.

I didn’t get a chance to take a single photo in Denver, because it was just too rainy. So that leaves me with those I got on my day-trip to Boulder, during the half-a-day of sunshine I had on the whole vacation.

And… here they are, in the gallery below. It’s a short little set this time around, and I got a bit excited with the editing tools on the last one (Surprisingly though, I don’t entirely hate the end result. Huh.)

In Motion
They do not have mountains like this back east. It was so exciting I just HAD to photograph it out the window of a moving bus.
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Cherry Blossom Adventures

DC is known for many things, most of them decidedly political. That makes the famous spring cherry blossoms all the more special, considering it’s one of the few events whose buzzwords do not include “Trump,” “partisanship,” “foreign policy,” or “clusterfuck.” I think I went to see the blossoms in April, but again I’ve been lazy about sorting through my photos for something worth posting.

The day I went, it took around forty-five minutes to find parking, which is nothing out of the ordinary for cherry blossom season. It started off cloudy but cleared up later in the afternoon, giving me the opportunity to play with light in the photos. The weather was gorgeous, with temperatures in the low 70’s and trees in peak bloom. This, of course, brought masses of people whose main purpose appeared to be blocking my framing with their elbows. Oh well–you win some, you lose some, I guess 😉

Sky
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A (Very Belated) Collection from Philadelphia and Chicago

I think I’ve been holding on to these photos from Philadelphia since the end of February, and the ones from Chicago since mid-March. I only started looking at them a couple weeks ago. Of course I chose today, the night before I’m moving across town, as the time to finally post them. I also have a set of cherry blossoms still sitting untouched in my Lightroom–hopefully I’ll get a chance to sort through those and post them within the next couple weeks.

I took the train up to Philadelphia for the weekend, hoping to revisit the Graffiti Pier and the navy yard and other favorite photogenic haunts. Much to my frustration, it chose that weekend to dump a blizzard on the whole east coast, complete with many feet of snow and sub-zero wind chill. So although I never got a chance to hit the places on my list, I did explore the (thankfully indoors) Reading Terminal Market. Reading Terminal Market turned out to be pretty great, with amazing food (pierogies, anyone?), crowds of people, and lots of neon in all shapes and colors. There were a good number of booths run by Amish people as well, selling everything from candy to wooden trinkets. Neon will forever be one of my favorite things to photograph, and the DayGlo-toned produce section was also a highlight.

I only got to spend one afternoon in Chicago–a quick stopover on the way home from another trip. That meant I had to choose one place to go, so I chose Millennium Park. Millennium Park (and its giant reflective sculpture, the Bean) was a fabulous place to photograph and experience, and I got a number of good photos on the way there, too. I still feel like I need to spend a longer time in Chicago and try to see more of what the city has to offer, because I know I really only saw a tiny corner. Fortunately, in a couple months I think I’m going to be in a place where that’s a lot easier… updates on that situation most likely forthcoming.

Philadelphia: Vegetable Rainbow
The veggies themselves were almost as bright as their neon counterparts.
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Best of 2017 (and a few from early 2018, too)

I decided to give in and stop relying just on Flickr, so following an eventful couple of weeks trying to wrangle WordPress, here it is: a real live website. To kick things off, here’s a few best of’s from last year and early this year.

Please excuse any technical issues. As I’ve been saying all over, I’m still trying to figure out how I want the site to work. Nonetheless, enjoy!

Malcolm X Park--Winter
I never would call Malcolm X park beautiful in winter, but then I saw it in a new light...
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