neighborhood walk — november

Each month, the Charlottesville Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee hosts and leads a walk through a different neighborhood in the city. For November the walk was in the Venable neighborhood. I took some photos of the group as well as some stuff we saw along the way.

📷: Leica M10-D 🔎: M-Hexanon 35mm f/2.0

Our walking guide.

Reading some neighborhood facts.

Walking uphill.

Show and tell for an old fallout shelter.

The entrance to the old fallout shelter. (Plus two city councilors.)

Seen: Some students giving each other haircuts. (Dudes rock.)

keepers

Did a recent dump of everything I’ve taken on my Leica M10-D over the last few months. These five photos were the keepers from a day when I sent a lot of time just walking around town, either by myself, with my kids or with my parents. I don’t usually rank my photos but I’ve arranged these in order of my personal preference.

Early morning game of some sort (soccer? flag football?) at Tonsler Park.

A lone chair, free for anyone who wants it.

My little homage to Lee Friedlander.

Train tracks off of Shamrock Road.

I saw this beauty while walking downtown with my parents.

some snapshots

I keep a little digital point and shoot on me at all times, and I’m always snapping pictures wherever I am. Here are a few recent keepers.

A large slide that I, perhaps unwisely, went down on with my kids.

Tourists posing with National Guard troops at Washington D.C. Union Station.

Vacant (?) takeout shop off of North Capitol in Washington D.C.

Some dude in a mask and a suit who I saw while riding my bike near the Washington D.C. convention center.

no kings

I attended Charlottesville’s “No Kings” protest last month, less as a participant than as observer. I brought a few cameras along: a Crown Graphic to shoot large format, a Leica M4-P to shoot a few frames of 35mm, and a Leica M10-D for when I ran out of film. Ordinarily, it is a little hard to distinguish the difference between formats on a phone or tablet screen, but the large format photos stand out for their sharpness and clarity.

As for the protest itself, it was big — with about 5,000 people out on the streets — and lively. A lot of people, here and around the country, are furious with the administration, and they’re desperate for anyone to show actual political leadership. I think the politician to grasp this, whoever it is, will be on the fast track to national office.

Anyway, here are the photos! As always, let me know what you think.

the district (circa april?) and some other random snapshots

One of the problems with shooting film is that unless you are extremely organized it is easy to lose track of when, exactly, you should one group of photos or another. Given the cherry blossoms, I think I took these at the end of March and the beginning of April. But I’m honestly not sure! The black and white pictures might even be from a separate trip! What I do know is that these were shot on an Olympus Pen FV half-frame camera using the 55mm equivalent lens. The color photos were taken on Kodak Ultra Max 400 film, and the black and whites were made using Ilford XP2 Super.

This next photo is actually from the block I lived on from 2010 to 2013.

And here are the other random snapshots promised by the title of this blog post. I took these around Charlottesville (I spend a lot of time walking around Charlottesville).

lumix lx10

Longtime followers know that I have a lot of cameras, but one thing that has always been missing from my collection is a small digital compact. There was a six month period a few years ago when I owned a Ricoh GR III, but I wasn’t happy with the fixed focal length. Earlier this year, I got a good deal on a Panasonic Lumix LX10 — a 1-inch sensor compact with a fast zoom lens. I haven’t left the house without it and I’ve been very happy with the results. Here are a few of the keepers, and expect to see more from this camera as I make greater use of it. I took most of these in Charlottesville, but there’s one in here from a recent trip to New York.

Williams College

I spent the better part of my January at Williams College, where I was teaching a class on the Constitution (so much for that!). It was absolutely freezing but I managed to take a few pictures! Here are the ones worth sharing. The last photo, it should be said, was not taken in Williamstown; it was taken in Troy, New York, which is on the way to Williamstown from Albany.