some election stuff
Just a few photos of election-related things in Charlottesville.
Memorials
Circumstances are such that so much of my photography these days consists of documenting every nook and cranny of Charlottesville, paying attention to each structure, looking for any way in which the landscape of the city has changed. One such change in my neighborhood is a series of memorials along a nearby street known for its danger to drivers and pedestrians alike. Several people have died on this street in recent months, and their families have erected markers along the median, each one a remembrance of a different life loss. I decided, one afternoon, to take pictures of them, since I see them as a kind of testament to one of the ways in which this city has failed its residents.
snapshots and a few thoughts
It used to be, if you wanted to share photos online, you had Flickr. But no one uses Flickr anymore and the main alternative, Instagram, doesn’t allow users to see photos in their full resolution. Most of us who like photography use cameras which can capture a huge amount of information — either on film or with a digital sensor — but we display our work on platforms that don’t let the audience see that detail.
This is a long way of saying I’m always at a loss for how to share a photo. I post things on Instagram by default, but I don’t make much use of either my Flickr account or my blog. Flickr, I think, is down for the count. But I may try to use this space more often. It doesn’t reach nearly the same number of people as my social media, but I like that you can see a photo in more detail, either on your phone or — preferably — on a tablet or proper computer screen.
With that in mind, here are some photos! I recently bought a Fujifilm X100V as something to carry around with me on my bike (using a leather sling pouch) and as an autofocus camera to take pictures of my kid, who is very fast and nimble and hard to capture using a rangefinder and manual focus. These photos, some of which I have already shared on other platforms, are from a few weeks worth of rides around town. Everything was shot in RAW and then processed after-the-fact using Fuji’s desktop studio software (which itself relies on the camera’s hardware).
Right on 29 heading North.
On Rio Road off of John Warner Parkway.
Off of River Road, I believe.
This was technically seen at a park in Scottsville, Virginia.
Seen at the Ix Art Park.
uva’s memorial to enslaved workers
Taken a few months ago, shorty after it was completed and opened to the public.
in which i go through a lot of trouble just to take a picture
We’ve had our fair share of protests in Charlottesville and rather than photograph them with a digital camera or one of my portable, lightweight film cameras, I have been lugging my Graflex Crown Graphic, a post-war era large format press camera, around town. The process of preparing film (putting each individual sheet into its own film holder, in complete darkness), preparing the camera (measuring light, setting the shutter and the aperture) and actually taking the photo (standing fairly still, using a shutter release cable to avoid any shake), is extremely cumbersome. But the results are good and I want to share them. Let me know what you think.
Production notes: The film is Ilford HP5 Plus and it was developed by Dodge Chrome in Washington D.C.
wandering, taking pictures, etc.
Because I can’t really travel anywhere, most of my photography these days has been of everything around me here in Charlottesville. What is nice is that, because of my new bike, I am much more mobile and can do a little more exploration. Anyway, here are the keepers from the last two months or so.
a few photos from the before times
I wrote about this in a relatively recent newsletter but before the world went to hell, I went up to Boston to check out the festivities around the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre. The piece I planned to write never took shape, but the photos I took came out pretty well. Here were the keepers. The square format photos are from my Yashica Mat, the others are from my Leica.
old churches and decrepit buildings
Lots of this stuff in rural central Virginia, and obviously I like to photograph it. Pictures taken at some point in the Before Times.
all of this stuff was taken in march, i think
I shoot around 6 to 8 rolls of film every month, and I’m mostly just photographing every little thing I see. Here are the keepers from mid-March to early-April, all taken on a Yashica Mat 124G.
spring snapshots
Just because we’re all under lockdown doesn’t mean I can’t occasionally wander around and take photos. All taken on an Olympus Stylus Epic using a variety of films.
