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***First, one quick reminder: as always, you can click anywhere on an image to make the image viewer window go fullscreen. Yes, it’s tiny otherwise.***

I really don’t do much shooting after dark, but in these days full of working hours and low on daylight, I decided I’d better bite the bullet. Tripod and hand-warmers in tow, I braved the chill to get some after-work shots in Alexandria. I’m fortunate that I work close by, because the holiday lights and waterfront at night are frankly breathtaking.

I fancied my pretentious self as having a love-hate relationship with the consumerist paradise that is King Street. Upon drinking the most fantastic 5$ (nutella) latte of my life however, I decided that this relationship was indeed one of pure love and light. Warm me from the inside, O Gods of Capitalism.

Tonight, I count my Christmas gifts with glee. I try to think (but never too hard) about all the people about to lose their COVID benefits and their eviction stay. I wonder whether even bringing it up will throw me into the territory of “preachy liberal fluff.” I’m pretty certain it does. I do it anyway.

I find that “cognitive dissonance” is the phrase of the evening.

Now… let’s see some damn pretty lights.

W

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***First, one quick reminder: as always, you can click anywhere on an image to make the image viewer window go fullscreen. Yes, it’s tiny otherwise.***

Remember when I posted a handful of black-and-whites documenting my new home in Largo? Well, here’s the colored shots. You’ll notice a couple color versions of black-and-whites I’ve already posted. There were some photos, when I looked through them in post-production, that I thought were interesting (perhaps in different ways) in both monochrome and color. Then there were some for which I decided only the vibrancy of color would do justice.

A few shots, like the one depicting a red-posted mailbox in front of a white rail fence, or the one of a child’s plastic dollhouse set out for the trash, felt like perfect little suburban samplers. Others, however, documented marvelous still-lifes that struck me as out-of-place in such a neighborhood. Among these, the fishing rod balanced expectantly on the boardwalk of a man-made lake instantly comes to mind.

Oh, funny story about said man-made lake. It bordered a county park, but the land appeared to belong entirely to an adjoining condominium property. “No Loitering” and “No Trespassing” and “For Residents Only” signs were speckled along the footpath at such close intervals that I found the spectacle, frankly, rather gaudy. This lake walk was too lovely (and aesthetically pleasing) to pass up, so I decided to blatantly ignore the signs. Judging by the enterprising boardwalk fisherman, I wasn’t alone in this.

That private-property-lake feels a bit like a microcosm of this whole neighborhood: so many housing developments, each with their own leasing companies and rental offices and land. Mass-constructed townhomes designed to seem organically grown, with friendly-looking sidewalked streets and lush grounds to match. A model community engineered to appear oh, so welcoming. And while there are few spiked fences and few electronic gates, when you look close you can see the sign at the mouth of every street declaring “For Residents Only.”

Ooookay, enough of me soliloquizing about the nature of private property under late-stage capitalism (god, could I sound more pedantic?!).

Let’s get to the photos!

Ret Row

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***First, one quick reminder: as always, you can click anywhere on an image to make the image viewer window go fullscreen. Yes, it’s tiny otherwise.***

Since moving out to Largo a couple months ago, I’ve been… adjusting. Largo is most definitely a suburb, and it’s the farthest I’ve been from DC while still considering myself, well, in DC. It’s a strange mix of McMansions, outlet malls, condo-fortresses, and modest frame homes that look like they’ve been here a bit longer than the rest. Sometimes I see one wide, residential street too many and almost believe I’m back in Champaign.

I have to admit, there’s a lot I’m not fond of in Largo. But even so, as the city’s oddities have started to reveal themselves, some things have grown on me. In any case, I decided to take up the challenge of documenting the normality. And, to do it in a way that might just make someone look twice at an innocuous drainage ditch or a faux-stone facade. I’m not sure whether I’ve succeeded in this task, but wandering around the neighborhood with my camera has been my only ward against stir-craziness amidst plague times.

I have a few shots in color to upload as well, but I decided to save those for another post. I kind of think these ones here are better standing alone.

Thanks also to the men in the two portrait photos who stopped me and asked me to take their pictures. Y’all make good models.

Private Property

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***First, one quick reminder: as always, you can click anywhere on an image to make the image viewer window go fullscreen. Yes, it’s tiny otherwise.***

What have I been up to since last October? Well, among other activities (like moving–more on that next post–and not dying of communicable diseases), I have been spending an increasing amount of time in the world of digital collage.

I’m still venturing out into the world with my camera, and I still have several new photo sets ready to post on here. However, I think my brain has been craving the kind of time-sucking, ultra-focused work that can only really be satisfied through hours and hours spent in Photoshop.

… masks and blending modes and hue shifts, oh my.

I’m no stranger to Photoshop collage work. I’ve dabbled in it here and there for half a decade, but only in the past year or so have I found it enjoyable as a medium to feel competent and creative in. So, for my first collage post up here, I’ve decided to choose a series that *wasn’t* part of my very first deep dive into this medium. I made these three nighttime-themed pieces relatively recently, but spread out over the course of a few months. I was originally working to complete them by the submission deadline to a night-themed art show–then of course, as often happens, I missed the cutoff by a frankly embarrassing amount of time.

But at this point, what else was there to do but finish the triad anyway?

***And last, one quick disclaimer: all photos in digital collages are mine, taken by me, unless otherwise specified. Any picture of me (while obviously, not taken by me) is used with permission from the photographer and from the other humans in the photo.***

#1: (No) Exit

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For the third and final installment of my August road trip, here’s an array of photos from along the highways. Taken out the window of a beat-up Honda Civic–documenting the seaside, countryside, and farmland up the pacific coast and across the upper midwest.The drive up highway 101 was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever taken.

California and Oregon offered views of deep, dappled forests and dense fog rarely seen on the east coast. We stopped for the night at a family-run motel in an Oregon shore town, and got on the road early the next morning blanketed by chilly, dense fog and salty breezes. As fingers of sunlight pierced through the fog mid-morning, I could see that this coast was dramatic–sharp and rocky, so unlike the sandy and palm tree’d West Coast that a person from back east might imagine.

It was a treat to connect with an old family friend in Seattle. We stayed a night in her house, nestled in a quiet cul de sac, perched on stilts above sparkling grey water. Unfortunately, there was no time to explore the city before we had to start driving once again, pivoting eastward to start our journey across the top of the country.

Sailing over Montana interstates, aside from getting to drive 85, the best parts were the great expanses of desert and the occasional perfect, sunbleached roadside building. Through this leg of the trip, it was rare to find an exit not marked with the familiar, blue-and-white “No Services” sign. And later, Minnesota and North Dakota, though at times growing monotonous with their endless fields of corn and soybeans, offered a particular kind of bleak beauty that lent itself well to photographs. The midwest also made a pleasing contrast to the golden, kodachrome light of the Montana desert.

So here, in the gallery below, I’ve tried to remember where each photo was taken and label them by place. I had limited success with this, considering that at some point in the past, I had apparently set my camera to scrub location from all metadata. But I did my best, and I think I managed to do it by memory, for the most part. And yes, I got a bit enthusiastic when it came to documenting signs and billboards. And no, I don’t regret it.

Enjoy!  😉

(And just a reminder: you can click on any of the images in the gallery below to view the whole slideshow full-screen.)

California #1

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Here, finally, is part II of my August road trip. Production on this installment was halted by a surprise trip back to Illinois, a trip which was unfortunately heavy on time spent waiting at the DMV and unfortunately light on picture-taking opportunities. But I’m sure that absolutely no one reading this (including myself) cares about my gripping adventures with local bureaucracy–so I’ll get right back to the previous month’s trip.

When I went back to pick through my photos of downtown San Francisco, I discovered there weren’t enough to warrant a full post on their own. So to pad it out, I decided to include my photos of Minneapolis here, instead of sticking to a more strictly chronological order and putting them with part III. A reader must, then, use their imagination to assume several days of highway between the first 11 and last 4 photos in the gallery.

Check back in another week or two, when (optimistically) I’ll have up my last post in this Road Trip series. Then, maybe, I can focus on the more timely task of documenting some fall scenes around the city. And in the meantime, enjoy a last glimpse of August in the gallery below!

San Francisco #4

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This was about to be one big post–that is, until I realized I had thousands of photos to pick through and edit and if I wanted to do it in one go, it might not be up till Christmas. And given that it’s a post about a multi-week summer road trip, I suspect that Christmas might not be the best time for it.

So I think I’ll do this in three parts, the first part being a 3-day Amtrak trip from DC to San Francisco. The other installments will feature some fun on the 101, a gorgeous drive over Montana freeways, and a visit to the (questionably) famous 9th-and-Hennepin intersection, among other adventures.

During my train ride, I got to pass through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, and to make conversation with an array of bizarre, remarkable people. I arrived disoriented and sleep-deprived (given that I hadn’t sprung for a sleeper and consequently got practically no sleep), but the whole thing was so, so worth it. One upside of being fully conscious at 5:00 am was that I got to take full advantage of the morning golden hour, a time that I rarely get to experience awake.

Honestly, most of the photos I took out of the train window didn’t turn out that hot. At first, I had my doubts whether any of them would even be usable–many were blurry or had too many reflections from the windows. But then I looked at them again, and decided that even the photos that might not be technically great still had a kind of interest about them. They grew on me. And after some editing and thinning of the photo crop, I realized that I did like this batch of photos–in fact, I liked them a whole lot. And I hope you like them too.

(A quick note: the rainbow sheen on some of the skies is the result of a weird reaction between my polarizing filter and whatever UV coating they put on the train windows. It was a surprise side-effect at first, but I ultimately decided I liked it.)

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Check back for part II in a week or so!

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