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Rain all day

I'm back in Alexandria after a nice long weekend down in Richmond. I could use more time at home. We're all snuggle deprived, Oz, the cats, and me. Weekends are not enough.

I'm still employed. Oz asked me, "Do the other trainees all talk about the day they get fired?"

"Not out loud."

The place I'm working at has pretty high turnover. It's pretty much a coin toss whether any of us will be here in a year. But everyone in my training group has made it through training and next week we're getting thrown to the wolves. We can hardly wait. I'm kind of bummed about moving out of our current office. We have a panoramic view of a landscaped park-like area and the office is toasty warm (or "hot" as the boys call it). The building we're moving to is rumored to be icy cold and we'll be put in offices on interior corridors. No windows. Just greenish fluorescent light, piles of work, and cold feet.

A recent milestone: my first bifocal prescription. Yeah. You'd think that what with the lupus I could be spared the old age stuff, but no. I get all the regular decrepitude in addition to the special decrepitude. Bonus! After hearing about buying glasses online, I'm thinking I'll try it. If the cheap online glasses don't work out, I've got vision insurance to help pay (in theory) for full price glasses. I don't mind skimping on glasses. I wear contact lenses most of the time, so I only wear glasses for about an hour a day. I've been using the same frames since 1991. I think it's time to get some new ones.

Other optics, however, are irresistible. I got a new lens, 20 glorious millimeters of wide angle fun:

Spring is busting out all over. Alexandria, being an extra hundred miles north, seems to be on a two week time lag from Richmond. Which means, I guess, that the pollen isn't going to hit till mid-May. Though I get to experience the pollen twice, I also get to enjoy the cherry blossoms and red buds for twice as long.

Sakura

Spring is here, and that means cherry blossoms!

Peak day, down on the Mall

I've lived most of my life within 100 miles of the Tidal Basin and the cherry trees, but I've never been to see the cherry blossoms. Till this year! I had the wrong date for the festival, but Oz came up and it turned out to be the perfect weekend to see the cherry blossoms. So pink, clouds and clouds of pink. Look how pretty.

29 March was also the day of the kite festival. I didn't know about that either till we heard it on the radio that morning. Kiteless, we went to the Mall and walked among the kite-flyers from the Smithsonian station down to the Washington Monument and the Tidal Basin. Oz had to be satisfied with helping a guy get his kite aloft and giggling at the little kids running around shouting, "A kite! A kite!"

The crowds were immense, but not dense, and very mellow. There must be something about kites and pink flowers …

Apocalypse of snow

Not.

So very, very not.

As usual, I dismissed all the wishful thinking cleverly masked as dire warnings. Then, on Friday night we saw the ring around the moon, impressive and suggestive of heavy weather (the math, more photos). The only other time in my life that I saw the moon ring, a huge thunderstorm hit the following night. (I was camping at the time. While we listened to the thunderstorm hammer down outside, the Princess and I congratulated ourselves on having given up on the swampy little pup tent and gone to sleep in her dad's van instead.)

So what horrendous weather rolled in after the moon ring?

A day-long flurry. Yes, it snowed for a whole day and looked pretty in the process, but a minor accumulation of slush on grassy areas just doesn't say "winter storm" to me.

It was still too cold to go outside, so I played with my camera inside.

Sparky by speedlight

Oz got me some gels to help with color correction on the flashgun. Here I've got a tungsten gel (to compensate for light bulb light) on the flash and the white balance on the camera set to tungsten. The result? A kitty with a healthy golden glow and the daylight from the window behind him blued up quite nicely. It was actually bright and sunny outside.

Time continues to fly by. I still have my job. I seem to be getting used to it (in that I am still employed, still able to get myself to the office every day, still interested in what I'm doing). I'm liking the benefits and the steady paycheck. I get days off and my paycheck stays the same. I can make financial plans based on the expectation that the money will show up when it's supposed to. When you're self-employed, you base your plans on the money not showing up and a day off is always a day without pay.

One thing that is hard to get used to is being indoors all day. Leaving home in the dark and returning home in the dark. But it's already starting to get lighter. The last couple weeks I've been able to enjoy winter sunset clouds on my way home. And from one of the windows in the office I can glimpse the Washington Monument turning pink when the sun is hanging out at the horizon. I'm only going to be in this particular office till April, so I'll enjoy the windows and the view while I can.

My trainee group was tops in production for the quarter, so we got swag. They didn't give us swag when we started up. I guess it's cheaper to wait and then give the swag to just ten percent of the incoming trainees. We got a mug and a lapel pin with the organization seal. Pretty minimal swaggage. The mug has a flared top. Yeah, basically they rewarded us with dribble cups.

Am I in a Dilbert cartoon yet?

The goose is getting fat

I've never had goose, actually …

I've had a busy few holidays. We made our annual fruitcake. I told Oz, "No more fruitcake. We're not doing that again."

He said, "Oh, you'll forget by next year."

"What, is that 'fruitcake pain', the kind of pain you forget?"

He may be right. This evening, I read an article about black cake and the wheels started turning.

We ran around town taking pictures at night.

Christmastime skyline, from the floodwall

We headed over to downtown to check out the enchanted reindeer forest. I parked on 10th Street, hopped out of the car, and looked over my shoulder. I saw this:

Virginia State Capitol, from 10th and Bank Streets

This shot may be tucked into the (late) holiday cards this year.

I took some pictures of the capitol and the skyline with us in the foreground, but we came out garishly orange thanks to the sodium vapor lights. Color correction just made us green. The solution? Black and white! I'm planning to try a few other things to see if I can get a shot of us in color, and colored like actual human beings.

Now I'm up in Alexandria again despite a Freudian brain fart during which I forgot which Mixing Bowl exit gets me to my apartment. I called Oz from the road to ask him if he remembered. He didn't, but managed to find my forgetfulness highly amusing. He accused me of having a bloggable moment.

Anyway, thanks to the vicissitudes of accumulated annual leave here in Real Job land, I am maximizing my continuous days off and minimizing the amount of leave taken by working on the 26th and 27th, then going back down to Richmond for a long New Year's weekend. More photography, more cooking, and the Kohaku. I love New Year's. It's my favorite.

Happy Holidays to all!

Dismember the gourd

Behold, we have news:

Oz is a grandpa. He kept checking the blog back around that last weekend in October, but I am a bad blogger anymore. Not that he needed me to tell him, he just wanted to read what I had to say about it.

And I say, The baby is cute. And when he got fussy, Oz handed him back to his parents and we cleared out. Not having had any kids myself, I feel like I've totally cheated, skipping straight to grandparenthood like this. And I get to keep my figure too, as my neighbor pointed out.

I am still employed and I'm coming to you from Real Job Land, aka Alexandria. How long can this last? This evening, on the train from Richmond, an attack of paranoia about convinced me that they'll be firing me any day now. We've finished the most intensive part of the training and now we're working. It's okay so far. I'm wondering if I'll get bored with it once I get good at it. In the meantime, the steady paycheck thing is pretty cool.

Due to time constraints, my main creative outlet these days is cooking. I make up lunches to take to work. Since I discovered the amazing benefits of a high protein lunch (You can stay awake all afternoon!), I have been experimenting with beans and rice. How many different ways can I prepare it? Quite a lot, I'm finding.

This weekend I got to flex some different culinary muscles. At the natural food store we found a Japanese gourd (kabocha) and a huge pile of end-of-season sweet Italian peppers in all the beautiful colors: red, orange, yellow, green, and all the variations therebetween. We made kabocha simmered in dashi, sake, and a bit of soy sauce. I don't think we got quite the flavor that I recall from Japan, partly because the American kabocha was somewhat thinner-walled than the Japanese kabocha we enjoyed on our last trip, and probably also because our broth is missing some secret ingredient (like a vastly greater quantity of sodium). Still, it's about as good as I'm going to get on this side of the Pacific. Then I cooked the peppers into a sweet summery pasta sauce with herbs, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and marsala. So delicious and probably the last we'll get of that till next August.

Of late, I have not had enough time to goof off with my camera. I'd probably get put on a terror watch list for photographing the area where I work. It's dark by the time I get home. I don't have that much stuff in my apartment to photograph.

I suppose I should further explore the modeling potential in the produce section and the gutters of my neighborhood.

On reflection

North 11th and East Marshall Streets

An unexpected pleasure in Court End and the MCV area, which is somewhat short on pleasure because when I'm there I'm usually getting jabbed by a phlebotomist, is walking south on 11th Street and suddenly seeing the rippling reflection of the nineteenth century townhouses in this twentieth century mirrored building. I always seem to forget this spot so every time it's almost a surprise. This I shot from Oz's car on our way home from dinner last night.

I haven't been doing much photography this summer. It's been hot and nasty out and I have to hide from the sun. I've also been more or less totally occupied by my impending move and foray into "real job" territory.

This is my last night at home for the next week. Monday is the day I join the ranks of the employed. I think I'm okay with it, as long as I cling to the idea that I'm simply gathering material. I'm a Spy in the House of Work. I don't have to be a proper grownup employed person, I just have to pass for one.

Bears of Doom

Bear Affair carnival ride as seen on I-95 last Sunday.

This isn't the first time we've seen these bears. Back in 2003 I photographed them from a different car on a different stretch of I-95.

I've never seen this ride in action, only in transit. I did a little googling and found where I could buy my own (used). It looks like you just stuff people into the bears' tummies and spin them around while they scream and perhaps barf. Some people video the process from inside the bears. I couldn't find any video shot from outside the bears.

It's like that old joke, "Outside of a book, dog is man's best friend. Inside of a book it's too dark to read." Only with bears and screaming.

Color space

Part of Birthday Month is presents. I got one today!

Last week, as I was wrestling with my cousin's wedding pictures and bemoaning the fact that the color on the monitor was not the same as the color on the printer or even the color on the other monitor, I recalled that they make calibrators for just this sort of problem. "Oz, for my birthday, I want … "

Now my PC monitor is all calibrated and on screen, my photographs look very nicely colored. My relatives and I are not quite so flushed as we were looking before calibration. (No alcohol at the wedding, so we were not flushed in reality either.)

I then tried to color calibrate my photo printer, which does a great job except that photos print darker than they appear on screen (no way around that, I guess, seeing as how prints aren't backlit) and the reds tend to pop more so my relatives and I look flushed in the prints. I ran through the calibration procedure and all seemed well. Then I printed a shot of my aunt. Red auntie! Back to the factory defaults. I tried adjusting the color space setting on the printer. Less red auntie! That'll do for now. These test prints are sucking up all my ink.

Eh. I'd like to be able to do my color correction on the monitor and have the image print with those colors. I'm not quite there yet. Since I mostly enjoy my photographs in electronic form, having the monitor calibrated is more important. But when I drop a print of my cousin and his bride into the CD mailer, I don't want them looking all red. (I inflicted CDs of photos on everyone, which they are unlikely to look at, hence a nice print to stick on the fridge.)

Everyone have a good Mother's Day?

Fisheye view of a foxglove, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

Pitcher plants in bloom

So, should I read anything into this? Mom and I go to the botanical garden on Mother's Day and my two favorite flower pictures are of a foxglove, the plant which so frequently appears in murder mysteries as the strychnine vector, and the blossom of a carnivorous plant. I was especially taken with the pitcher flowers, which I'd never seen in bloom before. They're so alien looking with the shield thingy in the center. Mom took a lot of flower photos (in lieu of taking cuttings) (which she has done there before). She's been really psyched with the flower photography since I showed her how to put her little point-and-shoot camera in macro (flower) mode.

As you can see, the weather was unreally beautiful. Perfect for eating brunch outside in the shade (except that a bird pooped on Mom). Perfect for a garden walk. Perfect for Oz hiding in the kitchen all afternoon and making chicken gizzard stew.

A fine kettle

I'm developing a healthy respect for the people who do product photography. You know, the unexciting photos of items for catalogs and advertisements. It's harder than you'd think and you need a lot of technique, gear, and experience.

I don't have much of any of those and as a consequence, I've taken many bad photos of my old kettle.

I really like this old kettle, but it isn't usable any longer, especially since the cats knocked it onto the floor and the whistling bit (the cap for the spout) fell off and disappeared. We got a new (better) kettle a while ago and I've just been keeping the old one around because … It's really old. It's the kettle my family used since I was a kid, maybe even before, but I wouldn't remember that.

I like the shape of this kettle, a copper-bottomed, stainless steel West Bend. It's a simple, straight-sided cylinder, banded by two pairs of thin, decorative grooves. The sides bend inward a few inches up and rise in this low, perfect, mid-twentieth century curve to a flat top. The handle is a two-legged arc of black plastic, maybe bakelite, and is molded to fit my fingers. T-R-I-G is stamped vertically into the side of one of the handle's legs. This kettle is (was) a trigger model with a red trigger at the index finger position which, when pulled, lifted the whistling bit so you could pour water out.

Oz hated this kettle. The trigger mechanism was wearing out. The spout was the only opening so the kettle couldn't be washed out. He was convinced that the inside was all rusty and nasty. It wasn't. I used a flashlight and looked inside. Since the kettle was only ever used for boiling water, it was probably the cleanest place in the house.

And today I photographed it. And photographed it. I used different drapes, fiddled with the speedlight on and off the camera, held up a white sheet around the camera to cut down on the reflections, and so on. All to no avail. What I like about my kettle is not showing up in the pictures.

Now the kettle is sitting on my dresser. If I can't get a good picture of it, I suppose I'll just keep it and stick flowers in the spout. Someday I'll figure out how to show you what it looks like to me. If you can't wait, you can buy almost the same kettle, only in much better shape, on eBay.

[Also, since all the other kids are doing it: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007. Lately I've been thinking about Player Piano. I read most of his books when I was living in Japan. As an exchange student, I couldn't afford to buy books so I was at the arbitrary mercy of the English collection in the third sub-basement of the Keio University library. Luckily I found lots of Vonnegut and an odd paperback by Kilgore Trout. Tokyo was surreal at the best of times. Tokyo on a Vonnegut bender? Think about it.]

Well, it snowed. And there was a bike race.

Standing around in the cold waiting for others to exert themselves for one's entertainment is exhausting.

Also, it snowed overnight on Friday. I didn't think it would because I no longer believe the forecasters when they get all excited about the barest hint of a chance of snow, or a big storm, or whatever. So I didn't heed the warnings and completely forgot about throwing a sheet over my hydrangea and its juicy new leaves. Saturday morning found me, before coffee even, standing outside in my slippers and bathrobe and sub-freezing temperatures, picking snow and ice off hydrangea leaves. I tried using a broom, but that knocked the leaves off the bush, which pretty much defeated the purpose of removing the snow.

After I gave up on the shrub and downed some coffee, it was time to go back outside. The 2007 U.S. Open Cycling Championships were coming right through the neighborhood. For the tail end of the men's Williamsburg to Richmond race, they were biking in on Route 5, up through Libby Hill Park, then looping through downtown and back to the park. Eight times.

I bundled up, inadequately as it turned out, and walked down to the park. On the way, I shot a few not-too-exciting pictures of snow on dogwood blossoms, snow on wisteria blossoms, and snow on azalea buds. I got to the park a little after 10:00. They had a Jumbotron set up so we could watch the race in progress. The Church Hill Association was having a bake sale (I neglected to bring money, so no muffins for me). People, dogs, and babies were playing in the snow and practicing their cowbell ringing. The sun came and went. We waited and watched. The footage of the race through the central Virginia countryside looked really pretty, what with the snow on the trees. The cyclists didn't look all that happy about it, though, especially when they were getting blasted with snow.

Thanks to the snow, the race started over an hour late. Much of the morning looked like this:

Oz was sleeping in. I called him to let him know where I was. He moseyed on over to Chimborazo and called me. "Wrong park, dude!" Then he moseyed down to Libby Hill. I had a good spot picked out at the top of the hill. I used Oz as a windbreak for a while. Other photographers with big cameras and press credentials showed up and tried to edge me out. Someone from engineering school walked over and we caught up for a bit. The wind kicked up and low clouds rolled over the river valley. White stuff was in the air. "Are those flower petals?" "No, there were flower petals before, but that's snow!" "So much for the Easter bonnets and little dresses."

Finally the sun came back out and the leader appeared.

Then the rest of the guys appeared.

Cowbells were rung, hands were clapped, and kids stopped saying, "Can we go now?"

Photos were taken by all and sundry!

We watched the circuit through downtown on the Jumbotron and watched them come up Libby Hill for the second time. Then we split for coffee. I think I spent the rest of the day trying to warm up.

A snapshot

When I take my constitutional, I carry my camera unless it looks like rain. I take pictures of things I see along the way, whatever catches my eye. I really should vary my route more, though watching how the same things change with the seasons has its own appeal. Over the last couple days, for example, all the cherry trees blossomed and now there are these clouds of pinkish white dotting the neighborhood. I never photograph people (unless they wander into the frame). The other day, though, I stopped to chat with a neighbor who always asks, "Taken any good pictures?" I said, "Uh. Not really. Can I take your picture?" "Sure!"

So I shot a few pictures of him. Head and shoulders because I had the 50 mm lens and didn't want to zoom (away) with my feet. I couldn't tell from the LCD whether they came out or not or whether there was enough light. When I checked them out at home on my monitor, I found they were pretty good. The first shot was the best, as is often the case. I printed out a copy and dropped it through his mail slot the next time I went by.

The next day when I walked by, he leaned out his window and called, "Thanks for the picture! I look great!"

"You do!"

Festive Sunday

At the St. Patrick's Irish Festival, St. Baldrick's participants get their heads shaved to raise money for children's cancer research. Drummers and bagpipers provide the background music.

Yes, we went to the St. Patrick's festival today, for the first time ever. This is an annual church fundraiser held in the neighborhood. You'd think in fifteen years on the Hill we'd have made it before now, but no. Mostly because a lot of the festival involves standing around drinking beer and we're not so into that. They have a few stages set up and different performing groups, bands to pipers to Celtic dancers. In Patrick Henry Park, a children's area had large, inflatable, bouncy things, kid's games, and all the best shade. There are also Celtic-themed vendors (we're still not Irish so the "Kiss me, I'm Irish" stuff is right out), fried foods, and a Ladies' Auxiliary Bake Sale. We saw free range nuns, guys in eighteenth century garb from the Patrick Henry speech reenactment at St. John's, and lots of guys in kilts. [Note to guys in kilts: The kilt is great, but don't pair it with a worn out, too tight T-shirt unless you are extremely ripped. Everyone looks good in clothes that fit.] Lots of newly bald people too. I hope they remembered to bring sunblock for their heads.

In other news, spring is really here:

Lovely cherry blossoms

Camellias too

Forty signs of cat pee

Actually, there's only one sign. It's yellow, damp, and stinky. It leads to conversations like this one:

Me: Oz, there's a sponge on the kitchen floor over under where the towels are.

Oz: And?

Me: You need to know that it's been used for cat pee.

Oz: So I shouldn't use it to wash my face?

Me: Yeah. Or to wipe off a dish. Or to clean the counters. Or anything.

Well, enough about the cat pee. It's been less of a problem of late, though I expect that to change as spring does its thing. That thing is happening now, in fact. Spring has crept up on little lamb feet, warming up the days and nights until we don't need to run the furnace, then we can open the windows during the day, then suddenly we're leaving the windows open all night and tomorrow it's supposed to get up to 80 °F. I love having the house open, but over the past year or so, open windows have correlated with bad cat toilet habits.

Again, enough about that.

I've been playing around with my 50 mm lens some. I think I have wide angle eyes, because with this lens I'm always having to back away from my subject. Other than that, it's a great lens, beautifully sharp and smooth. Oz and I were playing with the speedlight and I took a bunch of pictures of the cats (my principal models).

One thing about the fabulous optics and great resolution? When I view the photos in full screen mode on my monitor, I can see what a bad housekeeper I am. We have got some major dust in this house. One picture was of Sparky classily drinking out of the toilet. That picture would be appropriate for I can has cheezburger except that I can see how it's time to clean the toilet. It's also easy to see when someone needs to do a little nostril grooming.

I don't think I'll be posting any of those images. But here's one taken with that same lens.

X-treme pruning at North 27th near East Broad Street

The city and power company have been doing some long overdue pruning. If they cut the trees away from the power lines, maybe we'll have fewer power outages during the storm season. There'd better be. I want something to offset the loss of shade.

Bad habits

I really need to start writing the clever things down when I think of them, or when Oz says them, rather than waiting till evening when my head empties out after a soul-crushing day of weird technology (right now I'm translating patents for automotive supplemental restraint systems that look a lot more dangerous to the vehicle occupants than oncoming traffic). The problem was compounded today with a migraine plus bonus light sensitivity. Thanks to the joy of tight deadlines I was stuck staring at screen after screen of car passenger-damaging equipment and when I finally gave up, I still had to shade my eyes every time I walked by a window. And that's with the blinds drawn. Oh, my head hurts just thinking about it, so I'll stop thinking about it now.

I had the foresight to run over to the donut shop before the dizzy spells began in earnest. (After the dizzy starts, I don't drive.) Donuts and coffee are surprisingly effective headache remedies. The donut shop lady said, "Hey, I haven't seen you for a while." I told her that I'd been going to be in a wedding and I wanted to be thin for it. She said, "Oh, we're all the same. We always starve ourselves for important events." I wouldn't go quite that far. My slack weight gain avoidance plan has a special exception for headache donuts. Actually, I have a special exception for just about anything I want to eat as long as I've been getting regular exercise.

So, how about some architecture? Get it while you can.

Murphy's Hotel, aka the Eighth Street Office Building, North 8th and East Broad Streets

Despite efforts to save Murphy's Hotel, demolition of this 1911 building will start in a few weeks, after they salvage some of the pretty bits. The state owns this old hotel and has been using it as an office building. When the fancy trim started to fall off, they built covered walkways down on the sidewalks, because that's cheaper than maintaining the thing, I guess. Now they're going to tear it down and build something new and boring in its place. It seems the new building will be a better match for all the other new, boring buildings and boring surface parking lots that are springing up all down Broad Street as older, interesting buildings are getting knocked down.

Here's a dandy detail from a completely different building.

From the Grace Street façade of Berry-Burk Co., North 6th and East Grace Streets

Though, alas, the department store is long gone, this building is not endangered and has been turned into apartments. We suspect that the dandy is meant to be Beau Brummel, noted Regency dandy. Though Mr. Brummel shuffled off this mortal coil over eighty years before this store was built in 1926, he was immortalized in a 1924 film. Coinky-dink? I think not.

Oz can't believe that anyone ever dressed like that, with a top hat straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

Snooze

After all that talk about the speedlight, I figured I should show it off. What it can do, anyway. The speedlight was on the camera, aimed up and to the back, and covered with a white Styrofoam cup as a diffuser. Ta da! We have an evenly lit, undisturbed kitty.

This does not mean that I'm going all cat blog.

Another benefit of the speedlight is that Oz likes to play with it. He loathes having his picture taken, but not if he can play. Suddenly he's bringing home white Styrofoam "diffusers" and sticking grape tomatoes behind his eyeglass lenses.

Finally!

Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo is a success. After countless test shots and technical fiddling, I got one that will do, though the backdrop is a little dark. In the photo, I look like myself and like a human both, with a little Mona Lisa smile.

Getting a good passport photo is hard if you don't have studio equipment. You need a lot of light. A lot of white light.

My setup was a little bit ghetto. I had a white sheet on the floor to help with the bounce. I put the camera on a tripod with the lens at eye level. I had the speedlight on the camera with the light aimed at the ceiling. (If I'd had a second speedlight, I would have used it to light the backdrop and solved the problem of the dark background that way.) I stood a foot in front of the white poster board backdrop and the camera was three or four feet in front of me. I would have stood further away from the backdrop, but the room was too small. The ambient light in the room was as follows: halogen torchière in one corner behind and to the side of the camera, one window with the blind pulled all the way up (outside the sky was bright, but cloudy), and one incandescent light on the floor under the camera (aimed up at me to lighten the shadow under my chin). I tried both aperture priority and program auto modes on the camera, but this didn't make a difference, except that with a larger aperture I got a lighter image (duh). For some shots, I set the white balance to "flash" and for others I manually set the white balance against the white backdrop.

Even with all that light, the photo still came out dark. I used the "adjust color for skin tone" option in Photoshop Elements to correct for the multiple light colors. Images with the manually set white balance needed less color correction. Regardless of the white balance setting, the images were all too dark, so I lightened them and upped the contrast a bit.

(A better way to lighten the pictures would have been to use centerweighted metering so the camera would meter to my face, not my face plus the white backdrop. I should maybe try that out and see if it makes a difference. I guess this project isn't done yet.) (I just did a little test with Oz as my subject. The different metering makes a slight difference in the backdrop brightness, but is no substitute for more light.)

The State Department guidelines (pdf) say you shouldn't retouch your picture. They don't say anything about retouching yourself. When I was proofing my pictures, I noticed that, wow, my forehead was pretty shiny from the flash bouncing off the ceiling. And then I thought, hmm, maybe some lipstick? I never wear makeup, but I found an old lipstick and put on a light coating to give my mouth some definition. I also powdered my shiny spots with some translucent powder which came in the pretty, sparkly compact the Princess gave me as a bridesmaid's gift. I even remembered to brush my hair. Clearly I belong on the other side of the camera. I am not cut out to be a model.

If all this seems excessive, that's because it is. I could have shot a lousy, but perfectly acceptable passport photo in about as much time as it takes to set up the tripod.

What I had for breakfast

Harvey's Progressive Barber Shop, North 1st and East Broad Streets

This sign was repainted a few weeks ago. Oz and I drove past one evening, during the blue hour, and saw them working. We stopped at the light at 1st and Broad and I would have had a great drive-by photo-op, except that I hadn't brought my camera because it was getting dark and how likely was I to see anything I wanted to shoot?

This morning we were questing for brunch and there were too many people ahead of us at Perly's. When we walked back to the car (to continue the quest), I saw how bright the colors looked in the morning sunshine and we walked up to the corner to shoot the sign because it looked so great and we would never have that light again. I wouldn't have this picture if we'd been seated right away, so I guess I shouldn't mind.

But I think this increasingly upscale repopulation of the city has gone about far enough if I can't get my brunch when and where I want it. Is the expanding tax base worth it? I think not!

Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo is becoming increasingly involved. Yesterday I took some available light shots with the very light olive wall of my sitting room in the background. It was a great hair day too, because I got a haircut and my stylist ("Hair Engineer", it used to say on her card) always sends me out the door looking great. I even got some good pictures of myself, but the wall behind me came up too dark gray. If I use the wall to set the color balance, then my face will end up some weird color. A better backdrop is in order.

This morning we went to Office Max and picked up a sheet of white poster board and some sticky poster clay. Over brunch, which we finally ended up at dim sum because the wait was also too long at Millie's (Saturdays are as zooey as Sundays anymore), Oz started talking speedlights again. "Mm. Okay." And once we were in the camera shop, the willpower to delay gratification and buy it online just went kaplooey, so Oz presented me with a lovely SB-600 and some batteries.

Back home, I set up my studio and tried some more. The poster board I attached to the closet door. The rug in the sitting room is a mostly bright pink oriental, so I covered it with a white sheet to keep the bouncing light from getting all colored. I angled the flash up at the ceiling (conveniently already white) and started shooting. Now I have a bunch of well lit, rather sucky photographs of myself. Since "suck" is basically one of the State Department's requirements, I could be done now. I'm getting closer though. Non-suck is within reach.

The flash, by the way, is great. Instead of blasting the subject right in the eyes with bright light, you can blast something else so that the subject is merely washed with light. You get a happy subject and a nicely lit picture.

Work it, baby!

Work it like you might be going on vacation sometime in the next ten years!

It's that time of decade again, when I have to renew my passport. I didn't get it done in time to avoid the dumb RFID tag which generally broadcasts all your personal data (encrypted, but still). Thank you, State Department, for your well thought out foray into gadgetry. A smarter chip would simply key the chip to the passport contents, but we can't have that.

Oh well, nothing I can do about it now, except wrap it in tinfoil. I should probably get a hat to match.

The main thing, at this point, is to keep my passport current, in case I have to flee the country. Not likely I'll need to, but if we do go on vacation abroad, at least passport renewal won't be an issue.

All concerns about identity theft aside, the real problem with getting a passport is the photo.

In my first passport photo, shot in one of those booths, I looked like a toad. A toad with a pretty blue scarf, but a toad nonetheless. In my second and present passport photo, shot by a person at a photo developer, I look like someone else. Someone with a double chin. I don't have one, so I'm not sure how it got into the picture! The photos in both passports are so washed out that you can barely make out my face.

This time, I decided, will be different. If I do it myself, I should be able to get a good passport photo. I looked at the State Department guidelines and decided, based on their explanation of digital photography, that I was more than capable of providing a proper picture. Actually, their long list of what they won't accept has me wondering what people have tried to submit. Magazine clippings? Pictures of themselves in Halloween costumes?

Today I started Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo. I was having a really good hair day. Really, why couldn't my hair have been this cute for the Princess's wedding? Instead, it lay down flat and said, "Wah! Wake me up when the humidity breaks 30%."

Anyway, good hair, free time, camera, tripod, plain white drape. I'm set. I shot a bunch. I got one I thought was okay, but Oz wasn't thrilled with it.

I said, "Why? I have a nice neutral expression on my face."

He said, "If that's neutral, I don't want to see you looking mean."

"I don't look mean!" Although I probably do look mean when I go through passport control, so a mean picture might work better. Besides, Oz looks like a convict (like, you give him cigarettes so he won't beat you up) in the photo on his work ID.

He looked again. "Well, okay, I guess there is a hint of a smile there."

The more I looked at the photograph as a photograph, I began to think that I could do better. The cloth I used as a drape for the plain white background was kind of wrinkled. I've got a wall I could use instead if I took a bulletin board down. The lighting was nothing much. I got to thinking about the article on chiaroscuro (via) this morning. I could rearrange the lights a little …

Oz suggested we go shopping for speedlights. "And those silver umbrellas."

"No!" I'll see what I can do with the lighting I have.

I hope tomorrow is a good hair day.

Go for a walk

Flamingos decked out with Valentine's finery

My walking route carries me down 28th Street and past these flamingos. Most days a fluffy, friendly cat runs down the steps and demands to have her head rubbed. Most days I rub the kitty's head. Today was cold, so she must have been indoors. She's the most adorable cat; she's like a pocket version of Sparky, only friendlier.

I settled for shooting the flamingos. So pink, so saucy! The flamingos are part of a neighborhood movement to resist obnoxiousness. A few years back, some anonymous people calling themselves something like the "Church Hill Beautification Society" (Only it wasn't that. It was something more obnoxious.) started dropping nasty notes into people's mail slots. They called people's houses, color choices, and gardens … tacky. That, from people who were too tacky to identify themselves. The flamingos were set out in response. "Hah! You think that's tacky? How about this?" I'd have put out flamingos myself, except that I don't have a front yard to put them in.

The poison pen notes stopped soon after, but we still have quite a lot of flamingos around the 'hood.

Despite the cold, it was great to get out today. I don't know when's the next time I'll get to go for a walk. My mom is having foot surgery tomorrow morning, the same operation that Oz had the summer before last, so I'm going to be walking for two for a while. Indoors. Fetching and carrying. I may even have to stay at her house for a few days. Ugh! No Internet! And Oz will be left to his own devices. He's all "Woo! I can watch bad movies and eat chips!" I'm glad somebody has something to look forward to.

Crunch time

You could eat off this floor!

Sparky does. For some reason he hates to eat out of the dish. He flings the food onto the floor and eats from there. Except for the little bits. Little bits != food.

He even does this with juicy food if we don't mash it down in the bowl.

Also, thanks to the nifty fisheye view, I discovered that the previous owner of my house neglected to paint the bottom of one pantry door. Seeing as how I acquired the house nearly twelve years ago and haven't hardly picked up a paintbrush since, the responsibility for the sloppy paint job may have transferred to me.

I took a little break to play with my camera, but I've mostly been working on the huge translation job. The end is in sight! I hope I can finish this job before it finishes me.

Back to the beginning

Libby Hill Park

In order to justify taking a translation-free day, I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen so it would be less disgusting. It's sparkly clean now. While I worked, I listened to the school closings on the radio and glanced outside periodically at the totally snow-free street. Okay. Maybe snow actually was falling in Fluvanna County and other points south and west of Richmond. Oz said there was a light dusting on the parking lot at his work when he got in this morning. Some of his co-workers totally bailed on account of the "blizzard" and didn't even come in to work.

Finally, around one o'clock, a few desultory flakes wormed their way down to the ground. By two we had a full blown flurry. When I went for my afternoon walk, the grassy bits of Libby Hill Park were lightly frosted. Pretty! The scene put me in mind of another winter day, just a few years almost to the day ago, when I took a picture of Libby Hill Park in the snow with my one megapixel pocket camera and posted it on my spanking new blog.

I also saw a goose.

Goose on a Grace Street porch

There's a lady in the neighborhood with these pet geese. I hear the geese much more than I see them. Finding this one hanging out on the porch and honking his head off was kind of a treat. Loud, though. I might feel differently if I lived closer and was exposed to constant, high volume goosage. Tasty roast goose might start looking like an option.

Holiday hindsight

The Enchanted Reindeer Forest at the James Center, South 10th and East Cary Streets, for a last bit of holiday brightness as we enter the long, dark season.

Also, here are a couple pictures of my neighbor's yard art, which I mentioned before.

This is an (almost) overall view, through the fisheye. You can see down into her very long side yard, where she has the Christmas figures and lights and garlands integrated into her flower beds.

This is a detail of the porch, with Country Western singing deer head, Santa head, penguin, flowers, garlands, lights, and more! She told me that she got the deer last year, thinking it sang Christmas carols, and was kind of surprised to find him singing "Rawhide" and what all. She caught me photographing her yard. I told her I'd give her prints of the pictures came out. I think these are all right, but I think you have to see it in person to get the full effect.

Soon the holiday lights in the financial district will be shut off, and my neighbor will begin the next variation on her yard art.

Good-bye, holidays!

Making every house a fun house

Watts Hall, Union Theological Seminary
Brook Road near Westwood Avenue

As seen through the fishy eye.

It's been too icky outside to troop around on the floodwall, so I've mostly been shooting interiors. But the clouds rolled back a little this afternoon when I was driving down Brook Road and, not knowing when (or if) I'd ever again see Watts Hall bathed in perfect afternoon light, I had to stop. This was not the most distorted picture (I could just about make the building look like a big Victorian gumdrop), but it had the prettiest sky.

The fisheye is a lot of fun and gives a major funhouse effect to those boring holiday pictures of people opening gifts. My mom said, "Why do you want all that distortion?" So I photographed some random thing in her house and showed her the picture on the screen. Heh. Then it was, "Oh! Cool! Take a picture of this!" I think I took, like, ten shots of a little teddy bear beside a miniature Christmas tree. One of them came out pretty well …

Also, people who whinge about getting their picture taken will ham it up relentlessly for the fisheye. I think I've hit on something there.

Blue Christmas

Richmond's financial district at sunset on Christmas Eve

We're too hopped up on sugar to be blue. It's a wet, gray Christmas outside, but we're inside, all cozy and geeking out with our new toys. And the sugar. I made a baked French toast dish for breakfast: a pan of bread soaked in egg and milk overnight, then baked with a topping of brown sugar, pecans, and butter. All that, and then we put maple syrup over it and wash it down with coffee. Oz insists on calling it pudding, but it is not! It is toast, and very French at that.

Oz gave me a fisheye lens for Christmas, along with about four sweaters. Now I can be both toasty warm and annoying. If the sky clears up by sunset, we'll go back out to the floodwall and try for another spectacular skyline shot, but this time with major parallax distortion!

I hope y'all are having a great holiday. Be sensible and consume less sugar than I have!

For all your J. Geils Band needs

There's an all request radio station in town. The pizza place we go to always plays this station as a kind of seventies and eighties American counterpoint to their televisions which are always playing an Italian satellite station or soccer on any random station which happens to be showing soccer. This radio station's slogan is (or was) "We play anything!" And, damn, but they sure do.

This is not necessarily a good thing.

Think about it.

In other news, we had another cat pee event, so I guess I spoke too soon. I'm still doing lots of physical therapy. The exercise sequence I'm supposed to do just takes forever and pretty much sucks up time I could be writing. Even so, I started drinking more coffee again. Yay! My imaginary friends have woken up and come out to play. Not so Yay! I also wake up in the wee hours and worry about the warping of the floorboards at one end of the living room.

Yeah, other people get to worry about actual problems, or at least nameless, menacing fears. I get warped floorboards. Thank you, brain.

Also, it is autumn.

This is the railroad bridge over the James River. By the bases of the piers you can see the footings of the older bridge replaced by this one. Oz knew a guy who crossed this bridge on a motorcycle. This was a long time ago, once when the river was so flooded that all the bridges were closed. The river must have spilled way out of its banks, but this guy had a girlfriend on the other side of the river, so what else could he do?

Step away from the machine

I think I'm about done with my words for the day. Too bad they're in caption form. I finally posted all the pictures from our vacation that I'm going to post. My goodness, I had a lot of pictures of ponies doing what ponies do: eating grass and wandering out of focus. Here's a set of pictures from Chincoteague.

On Sunday we drove down to Williamsburg to walk around. I took pictures there too, of course, and here's a few of those too. As we walked through the colonial theme park area, we kept hearing this drumming sound. We sort of thought some historical reenactment was about to happen, then we spied the source. A little boy! And then another little boy! Masters of manipulation who convinced their parents to buy them little snare drums.

Also, Sparky is a helpful cat.

Okay, now I'm stepping away from the machine.

Bright spots

I spent a good part of the day reading a book which was not very good, but which I wanted to finish. I guess I shouldn't call that a "good" part of the day, it's more like a "rather large portion" of the day, the only purpose of which was to avoid doing anything productive. Oh, and I accompanied Oz on his quest for a replacement head lamp.

Today deserved better than that.

I did run out this morning to take a few pictures while the light was good. I think I was successful. This beauty is going to be demolished to make way for a modern structure (via). Okay, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the brick art deco structures are kind of odd looking, but in keeping with the city, all skylines aside. The parking lot to the left of the Liberty Press building was the original site of the Virginia General Assembly where the right to religious freedom was first established in this country. So the First Freedom people are knocking down the sort of historic building next door (Well, it's old. I'm sure something must have happened there.) to build their First Freedom Center. I guess they couldn't acquire the parking lot, which is probably a gold mine.

Pedestriana

We did basically nothing all day, but it seemed to keep us busy enough.

Around sunset we were out and, though the sky wasn't being particularly photogenic, took some pictures along Broad Street. We schlepped the tripod along and took some long exposure shots. Some guys walking by were very adamant about not getting their picture taken.

"Okay," we said.

"Really, I do not want to be documented."

"Fine. Look, I'll turn off the camera. Just go along."

"I do not want to be documented."

"Okay."

"I'm just a panhandler, trying to sell booze and cigarettes and I don't want to be documented."

"Oh." Do we seem at all interested in taking his picture? Or in buying a swig of his booze? No.

Eventually they moved along. When they were partway down the block, one of them turned and said we could take a picture now. I wanted to tell them that we had a zoom lens, but we just told them we were done. Then he tried to sell us cigarettes.

Elsewhere

I wrote lots of words about our trip down the peanut highway. Over here.

Eagles in the architecture

The Church Hill Bank, North 25th and East Broad Streets

Everyone's posting pictures of flags today, so I had to be different. I started looking around at all the patriotic signals in the architecture around us. I wandered through Church Hill on foot yesterday, and then had Oz chauffeur me today for an eagle tour of downtown Richmond. ("Hey, there's an eagle! Stop! No, you went past it." "I had to find parking!" "That was totally parking back there!") Click the picture for more sandstone fun.

By dint of working my butt off last week and yesterday, I was able to take today off. All the way off. No work at all. So we slept in, watched the Clash of the Axis Powers (Italy vs. Germany in the World Cup semifinals), baked bread, etc. I made pasta salad with basil and parsley from the garden and then quizzed Oz about the bug stuff he'd put out all over the backyard yesterday.

"You know, I rinsed the hell out of those herbs, but did you read the warning label on that poison?"

"Yes. It said it was okay for fruits and vegetables. Sheesh."

This evening, since the soccer match ran into overtime and we wanted to eat right away, we went to the Full Kee for dinner because they're always open. We finally gave in to the staff's insistence and tried the deep-fried spicy soft shell crab. It was fantastic, although Oz did point out that even deep-fried spicy tennis shoes would probably taste good, but this really was good. I've had a deep distrust of soft shell crab ever since a soft shell crab sandwich in Annapolis which included the guts. I like my crabs cleaned, thank you.

In feral cat news, I successfully pilled Sparky the biting cat with his anti-anxiety meds. After my first unsuccessful attempt, I worked on my technique and on training the cat to deal with having his mouth pried open. For the last few weeks I've been going through the process without a pill. Scoop up kitty, pry his mouth open, tell him what a good boy he is (e.g., lie), and give him a treat. It helps to do this at a time of day when he's relaxed and sleepy. Today I did the same thing, only I dropped a pill into the back of his throat. He swallowed it right up and scarfed down his treats.

This afternoon I told Oz, "It says it takes three weeks before the medicine starts working."

He looked at Sparky sprawled groggily on the red leather chair. "Three weeks, my butt. Look at that cat. He's totally zonked."

This would be a good thing. He hasn't been in the best mood lately. He's been collecting nicknames like "Grouchy-pants" and, when he's nasty (generally towards the other cat), "Fat Bastard." Even as a kitten he was naughty, but not too. Oz called him "The Knave of Twilight" because he never was quite bad enough to rate "Prince of Darkness."

Now I'm listening to the booming of fireworks in the distance. Later this evening, people here in the neighborhood will pull out their automatic weapons and fire into the sky. The usual, on the Fourth of July.

An ongoing project

Nursing Education Building and structures to the east
East Broad and College Streets

I think I have the details I wanted of the Nursing Education Building, but there is more to document. Several other buildings on that block, though not the ones in this picture, are going to be demolished soon. Now that I know that the demolition is really going to happen, I won't laze around in denial. I've already got a lot of pictures of West Hospital and the Williams Clinic, but I could get better ones. The Williams Clinic, for example, needs to be shot on a cloudy day, or at least in different light than what I've had before now. And I need to haul a tripod along next time to capture some nifty things in shadow, like art deco transoms.

Here's the Disappearing MCV set. It's only got eight photos so far, but there will be more.

It's nice to have a photographic purpose other than being the four leaf clover fairy. I found another one this evening and I offered it to the guy who walked by with a couple dogs while I was trying to photograph it. The dogs tried to kiss the camera when I bent down to show him where the clover was. I suppose it looks pretty odd to be photographing the sidewalk with a zoom lens.

But lucky.

Emergency documentation

East Broad and College Streets
West Hospital and the vanishing Nursing Education Building

The demolition has begun! One of the other local picture-taking people posted a shot of the Nursing Education Building with huge holes in it. I'd hoped that some alternative would be found, but it seems not. There's nothing like the sight of a charming Italianate building (it really doesn't look art deco at all) with chunks ripped out to galvanize my lazy butt to get out in the midsummer heat and take some pictures. I had taken several pictures back in February, 2005, but none of the sandstone block over the entryway, which is what's missing from the shot I saw online. Also gone: tiling from the façade, including all of the six pointed star medallions, half the Corinthian capitals from the engaged columns, the cornerstone, the strip of garden across the front, and one of the Ambulance Entrance lamp stones.

We went out this morning when it was only 89 °F and again this evening, once it cooled down to 92 °F. I'm still sorting through the pictures, but I think I have some fairly good shots of the building in its setting and of the details. I wish I'd known that the demolition was going ahead. If I had, I'd have got some shots before they started knocking holes in it. As it is, I figured we had to get out today because all the tiling might be gone tomorrow. They haven't started with West Hospital, the building to the left of the Nursing Education Building, and its other neighbors just yet. I still have time to get backhoe-free pictures of them.

Spilling the banks

Lehigh concrete silos down on aptly named Water Street

Some developer wants to put condo towers down here, on top of a sacrificial parking deck. How much would you pay for a river view with occasional evacuations? Also, the towers would mess up the view from Libby Hill Park.

Richmond wasn't hit quite as hard as some places by the big mid-Atlantic deluge which washed out bridges, caused deadly floods, and shut down bits and pieces of the federal government. A few streets along the river are closed and tonight the James River was at 14 feet on the gauge down at Great Ship Lock Park. I have pictures of the gauge from tonight and with the river at a normal level back at the end of April.

On the radio they said the James would be up today. I was so busy with work that I completely forgot about it, until I went for a walk about eight o'clock and saw from the park how the Slave Docks across the river were flooded out. Rather than continue with my regular constitutional, I walked down to Great Ship Lock Park and called Oz. He left off installing software and drove down to meet me. We, along with lots of other people, ended up taking a little flood tour.

Nothing brings out the tourists like disaster. "Well, it's more of a disaster-ette."

Oz said, "It's not even that. It's a 'water event.' Twelve feet of water up where we are, now that's a disaster."

The devil is in the details

On the laundro-mat, North 27th and East Marshall Streets

Doesn't the molding in the middle, with those projecting mitered corners, look a little demony? Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, it's June 6, 2006 and I posted my Local 666 picture a couple days ago.

Nothing especially devilish happened today. Even the cats were mostly well behaved. I had a couple half written entries floating around in my head, but they've gone and vanished. The devil must have ate them. Yeah. That's it. The devil ate my brain!

In the process of unpacking, Oz dug out his old film cameras. They are sitting all forlorn on a little table in the entryway with nothing but a little netsuke rat to keep them company. It makes an interesting still life which I'll probably shoot tomorrow if the light is good. I found some old rolls of film left from our trip to Japan in 2000, one of which was finished out with shots of the Egyptian Building. I suppose I should take them in to be developed and see what's on them.

I take pictures on all my errands

IBEW Local 666, East Nine Mile Road, Highland Springs, VA

In truth, whenever we drive through Highland Springs, I'm struck by how idyllic and wholesome it looks. I have no idea what the area's reputation is.

We went there after lunch because I wanted to get more details of the Henrico Theater, couldn't resist the IBEW, and then got sidetracked by some neon that I couldn't get a good shot of at all, but the barbershop across the street .

And it always does to have a camera at the Asian market.

I guess that's pretty much what I did all day. That and watch Oz clean things. He also made clean spots on the floors in the process. (Now, if the clean spots would grow and mate, then we'd be set.) He has a few boxes unpacked, but he's keeping them around just in case.

Today's lesson

Shoot at the highest resolution you can, given your camera's capability and available memory capacity. Always.

I got an email yesterday about this picture. A person working on promotions for the Amsterdam Dance Event wanted to use it in their posters and flyers. They are developing an international campaign with images from around the world and he liked how the "Tru-Ade" aligned with the acronym for the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE). They would even give me money!

As long, of course, as I could provide them a high resolution (300 dpi) image.

Wouldn't you know? This shot and all the shots I have of the Tru-Ade sign taken before the sign rusted away are at 96 dpi. In fact, I'm not sure how much higher resolution my Olympus camera can go.

I emailed the guy back and explained the situation. If I'd known that this picture would be so popular, if I'd known that the sign would rust away so fast .

He emailed me back, saying "Oh well." They'll have to find something else. They couldn't convert my image to 300 dpi without making it too tiny to use.

I have learned my lesson. My new camera does 300 dpi and I shoot at the largest image size. I may even switch to the "High Quality" setting, even though I'll end up with 5 MB images.

So. What about you? If you've got a high res shot of the Tru-Ade sign, post a comment and I'll put you in touch with this Dutch promoter.

Didn't you ever wonder about those tombstones shaped like trees?

Eddie Gilbert's grave, Oakwood Cemetery

I always assumed these were some kind of Victorian fad. You see these in older cemeteries: stone stumps, decorated with ivy, doves, and sometimes lambs if it's a child's grave. Tonight we took a closer look.

This evening, the sky was too pretty not to go take pictures, so we drove around the neighborhood and ended up at the Oakwood Cemetery. Your first impression through the gates is "Damn, but they must have had a special deal on obelisks!" Lots of obelisks among the smaller monuments. The Confederate Army section mostly has numbered marble cubes, rounded by the weather and looking like teeth pounded into the ground. Then I spotted the tree trunk, much taller than the usual run of these, and we had to stop.

Apart from the height, it must be six feet tall, the carving is really impressive: the dove, the ferns and ivy around the base, the surname spelled out with twigs, and the scroll. Especially the scroll, and how it's carved to appear like it's been hung on the stub of a tree branch. We noticed the "Erected by the W. of the W." on the scroll, noticed "W. of the W." on a couple other smaller monuments with the arboreal theme, and the Dum Tacet Clamat.

Ha! A clue. All I need is something to plug into Google.

W. of the W. is Woodmen of the World, a fraternal benefit society originally formed in 1890 for the purpose of unmarked grave avoidance and community service. They provided life insurance and tombstones to their members. They're still around today, and you can join and get the special tombstone, if you want.

The Phoenixmasonry Masonic Museum has a page on the Woodmen Group with pictures of their pins and emblems, old photographs of members in uniform and holding axes, and transcripts of rites and society songs. I really wonder if they're still doing the chanting and marching around with axes. And the twenty secret handshakes. Twenty.

Death benefits is serious stuff.

The Henrico

North Linden Avenue and Nine Mile Road, Highland Springs, VA

The first time we saw this building, we were driving down Nine Mile Road, looking for a carwash. Suddenly the theater appeared on our left, rising up like a huge Art Deco cloud.

The Henrico Theater made it onto the National Register last September. The registration application (pdf, pictures of interior details, pictures from 2001) has a lot of interesting information, including a description of the interior. (Which I must see. I am eagerly awaiting the grand reopening.) The theater opened on 25 April 1938 and was in continuous operation until the late 1990's. It was designed by Edward Francis Sinnott, Sr., who designed a number of buildings around town. The architect's bio in the National Register application includes a list of his buildings. I think my next photography project will be to track them down. I also need to return to the Henrico and get better shots than what I have of the metal pieces over the display windows and the pavement under the marquee.

The theater is owned by the county now and has been undergoing renovation for a few years, off and on as the money was not sufficient at the outset. According to the Henrico County Historical Society, the Henrico should reopen as a movie theater and performance space in the fall of 2007. An older article includes a plan of the property.

Where the sidewalk (still) ends

North 31st and East Grace Streets (where that intersection used to be)

Here's a map. When I took this picture I was standing on the south edge of Libby Terrace Park, or what's left of it. This is one of the areas severely damaged by Tropical Storm Gaston in August 2004, maybe the best known. The work to stabilize the hillside only began in September 2005. They're going to put in a retaining wall and rebuild the roads.

We last came by here in March 2005, when the site was still draped in plastic. Now they've scraped out the sinkhole preparatory to building the retaining wall and anchoring it. Maybe those interesting things projecting from the hillside are the anchors? Well, I never took civil engineering, so I can only guess.

While I was taking pictures, one of the workmen came up out of the pit. When he walked by where I was standing, I said, "Hey, did you know that this used to be the city dump, like fifty years ago? Do you all ever find dump stuff down there?"

He said, "Oh yeah. Bottles. Guys come by on the weekends and dig up bottles and sell'em. Get some good money too."

"Maybe I should come by and look?"

"Just get you a hardhat."

Now that I think of it, the fact that this area was fill would explain how it didn't stand up to the storm.

And how do I know about the dump? Once when I was going for a walk, as I was crossing Grace at 28th, a retired couple drove up and wanted to talk. They both grew up in Church Hill back in the 1940's, they said, and the woman pointed to a house on the corner. "I lived in that house. That playground at the end of the block? That was the city dump." They were excited to see how lovely the neighborhood looked and just wanted to tell someone (their ungrateful children, not present, weren't interested). They also told me they had tons of old photographs and their kids weren't interested in those either. I suppressed the urge to say "Are they nuts? Give them to me!" and referred them to Historic Richmond, because that was all I could think of. I've always wished I could see those pictures.

Up at dawn

Richmond Dairy, 201 West Marshall Street
Apartments for the lactose-tolerant (not a dairy anymore)

Oz got me up at 6:20 a.m. so we could wander photographically around Broad Street and the fringes of Jackson Ward. Being out that early is good for the light and the lack of traffic. Not so good? Forgetting to reset the image processing option on the camera from how I left it last night. "Sharpness" was set high and the edges of things look a little too edgy for my taste. Even so, I got some good shots, they just also happen to be … sharp.

Now we're a little jet-lagged what with having got a whole day's activity over with before noon. And sleepy. I had things I wanted to write, but I forgot them. Except for this:

We were driving through the Fan the other evening, and as we passed through VCU, I said, "There's the engineering building. This time of the semester it's filled with engineering students. Suffering."

Oz said, "You want to go in there and torture them? You can tell them how we saw one of your fellow grads working retail. And what have you done since graduation? Well, you've got a lot of blog entries under your belt."

"Hey!"

6:45

This morning I opened my eyes, glanced at the clock. It was 6:02 a.m. and Oz was not waking me up. Ha! So I rolled over and went back to sleep until he came in at 6:45. I was not pleased, but I could smell the coffee and, after all my snide remarks yesterday about not getting up for the light, some word-eating was in order.

And we went and took about a hundred pictures down in Shockoe Bottom. Some of them even came out, but I've only put up one so far:

North 19th and East Franklin Streets

Horses! Horses! They also have Mules! [Exclamation points added] The horizontal text above the doors looks to say something like "Richmond Bazaar" but it's been painted over so many times it's hard to tell. Probably a livery stable at one time, now a furniture restoration place. I noticed this sign once, years ago, after walking by many times and not seeing it. I took a picture and forgot about it until yesterday when I was hunting around for a different image. I thought, Cool sign. Damn, but that's a lousy shot. This sign was my primary mission, but we found other neat ghost signs: a hay and feed place across the street from the ex-livery and a sign for a saddlery (near as we can make out) tucked into an alley.

Then we went home and took naps.

And, because I can, here's a picture from Saturday.

North 21st and East Grace Streets
The building formerly known as the Shockoe Bottom Arts Center

Does it not look unreal? Especially if you compare it to the before picture. Yeah, the light is different, but still.

Out and about

J. P. Crowder's Virginia & Smithfield Hams
Brook Road and Broad Street

Too many reflections and crooked! But this is my favorite photo out of the umpteen I took this morning. Also, I went and signed up for Flickr so I can add an extra step to the whole photoblogging thing.

When I told Oz yesterday that I was going to haul the old computers and monitors out to the recycling center, he said, "Oh wait! I can take time off and come with you!" And so he did. He took a day off for a fun trip to the recycling center. And a doctor's appointment. And then I said, "I want to take some pictures of the storefronts on the south side of Broad Street. We have to do it before the leaves come out, and it has to be in the morning so the buildings won't be backlit." And things went on from there.

We were a little bit late to get the good light. We're going to try again on Saturday, instead of slugging around the house till brunchtime as we usually do.

The recycling center would be a great place for photography with a post-apocalyptic theme. Unfortunately, the whole place is a hard hat area so we didn't linger. I did see two guys using plastic wrap to bind together eight (ten?) foot high stacks of metal wheels on a pallet.

And another, not really related thing. A couple weeks ago we saw a No Smoking sign appear in the window of Country Style Donuts. We had to look twice because we couldn't believe it. "What will the old codgers do?" we cried. Whenever we go in, a minimum of two old codgers, cigarettes and coffee in hand, are seated at the counter and telling lies about lawnmower motors. We haven't done any followup because we've been trying to cut back on donuts, but we've noticed that there are always cars and trucks out front, so the sign doesn't seem to have deterred the regulars.

Today, for breakfast after our photography jaunt, we went to a Waffle House up the road from there. A sticker on the door announced that the Waffle House was now smoke free in accord with local ordinance; another, older sticker said that Waffle House provided a non-smoking section (which I don't recall they ever did). We said, "Woo!" because we are non-smokers. Then we went in, sat down, and noticed that a number of people were smoking. While we were eating, another guy came in, sat down by us, and started smoking. The waitress asked him if he'd like an ashtray.

I guess that all the diners on Williamsburg Road have posted these No Smoking signs to comply with an ordinance to … post No Smoking signs? Or maybe here in the East End, No Smoking means that you have to ask for an ashtray.

I'm curious about this ordinance, especially since I couldn't dig up anything online except articles about how the statewide smoking ban was defeated.

Back to School Parade

Every year, my neighborhood has a Back to School Parade for the city schools. I've never attended before, normally I experience the parade from the comfort of my house (sometimes even my bed if I sleep in). My street is not on the parade route, so the experience is limited to hearing the drums in the distance and saying, "Huh? Who's playing drums?"

I figured this year I should go. Usually there're marching bands and it's quite a big thing, it certainly always sounds like it goes on forever. Unfortunately, it rained all morning and this year's parade was somewhat abbreviated even though the rain stopped by the time the parade began.

We had some hopeful politicians, a child beauty pageant winner, the university police, and a van marked "K-12 Mobile Command Center." The parade included some classic (and not so classic) cars. The Mustang owners all turned out and a few other models were represented.

Most of the kids were walking. Some of them helped out corporate sponsors.

Church youth groups participated. These kids were singing.

And the parade wound up with a couple mounted police and an unmarked police car.

I checked the time stamps on my pictures and found that the whole parade, start to finish, only took about ten minutes to pass the corner where I was standing. No bands. Some of the other spectators were teachers and exchanged greetings with the students by name. While I'm happy enough not to live on Broad Street (lots of traffic), today I envied the people who were able to watch from their front porches. Maybe next year the weather will be more compliant and we'll have the full size parade.

A chorus line

Brassidium: Shooting Stars, "Black Gold"
Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

These orchids look like showgirls. Rockettes maybe? The orchid wing of the Conservatory is an amazing place, although I have to admit, a lot of orchids look like bugs. Some are fuzzy and cuddly-looking, but they are the exceptions. Since the last time I was there, the gardeners added a couple big containers of frilly jasmine, which filled the air with the scent of tea. (Dim sum, anyone?)

Down by the lake, my mom and I watched the Canada geese cross the road. Having just stepped out of the water behind their rudely hissing parent, some goslings tried to preen and walk at the same time.

These goslings are bigger than ducks. I wonder if .ling is appropriate for teenaged waterfowl, especially ones who will doubtless develop the kind of attitude displayed by their parent. Goose youth? Pinfeather mafia?

Chasing rainbows

Staples Mill and Bethlehem Roads

The colors don't come through at all! Such a pity, it was really brilliant, even through my grimy windshield. You could practically see the infrared. The other end of the rainbow was a double, the top of the arch went missing in the clouds. We took plenty of pictures on our way back across town, but it was faded by the time we got home. No pot of gold for us. I (driving) was wrongfully accused of not watching the road. Hmph! I say. And the camera was never in my hands when the car was in motion.

Speaking of pots of gold, there seems to be a sudden mass of transistor-related litigation working its way through the bowels of the U.S. court system. I've been translating patent documents related thereto and, while I'm glad to get some money coming in, the journaling mill gets no grist here. The process is not that interesting, I can't write about the subject matter, and I have no cohort with whom to have amusing dialog. The cats aren't even giving me good material. Bear with me.

Jam

My backyard

It's too bad wild strawberries don't have much flavor, I've got so many. At least they are festive, cute, and verdant.

Mr. Jefferson's wrapped Capitol

Virginia State Capitol
Capitol Square, North Ninth and East Grace Streets

(That shot really does bear all the marks of having been framed through a chain link fence with the sun full on the little screen and affording the photographer no view at all of the image. That state office building in the background is entirely vertical in reality.)

This isn't a Christo thing. The state capitol is getting a face lift and so are the grounds, which are being carved up beyond recognition. Supposedly it's all to the good, but I kind of miss the grand old magnolias and pretty walkways. Once upon a time when I was wandering around the grounds many years ago, I found where, on the ground in a grove of rhododendrons, the then-governor's children had spelled out their names in loose bricks. The governor's mansion is also on the grounds, so the capitol grounds were like their yard for a few years.

T. Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson appears to be overseeing the work from his vantage point on the Washington Equestrian Monument (featuring various illustrious Virginians), which is also getting a bit of a cleanup. On his right hand stands George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights on which is based the Bill of Rights in our wonderful Constitution.

G. Mason

Some parts of the grounds aren't being messed with. Over towards the bell tower at the Franklin Street pedestrian entrance, the tiered, Victorian birdbath-style fountain is dry but untouched. This charming water fountain isn't working either (it's probably on the same plumbing system). With luck, it'll be there still in 2007 when this restoration work is supposed to be complete.

Water fountain
Capitol grounds

With even more luck, we'll be able to get a drink.

Midday in the garden

How better to celebrate (lament) the last day of Spring Break than with a walk through the neighborhood?

Yard art
Libby Terrace

This side yard near the park is graced with two tire planters. One is ready for spring planting, the other is growing a crop of bricks. The planters are made from old tires turned inside out with the top side pinked for pretty.

Corinthian columns
North 29th Street

I think these people just got their porch painted. They may have had it totally restored. (I wouldn't know, I haven't been keeping track of all the work that's been done on this block.) All the capitals are in perfect shape, which is pretty unusual. On many porches in the neighborhood, half the capitals are missing, or half missing (i.e. part of the capital is there and the other part is gone), or the capitals that are there don't match. This is a result of the twentieth century decline in Church Hill, during which the houses were neglected and the pretty bits taken off and sold.

Moving right along, we duck past the police tape and orange plastic netting that block the sidewalk that runs along between the park at 29th and Grace and the ravine. Here we find where the sidewalk does indeed end, although it resumes about five feet below there.

Damage from Tropical Storm Gaston, August 30, 2004

This is some of the lamented damage that I wasn't able to photograph at the time because I was stuck in a wheelchair. Here, the ground slumped into the ravine below and simply lowered part of the sidewalk. The storm really served to highlight how unnatural the bluffs are. A flat hilltop that suddenly drops into something like a sixty degree grade? Pour a few million gallons of water on it and the true angle of repose shall be revealed unto you.

More storm damage

Looking beyond the end of the sidewalk, you can see where a street and some more of the park used to be. They are now located about halfway down the ravine. That little brick Cape Cod? Was for sale and in my price range at the time I was house hunting. I decided against it because the location didn't seem secure enough (in the crime sense, not the geological sense).

The city has responded to all this washing out of parks and roads by draping them with sheets of plastic, which were immediately rearranged by the rains. Actually, the park below Richmond Hill which I photographed after the storm was just this week regraded and seeded, so maybe they'll be getting to the others soon.

If I lived in that brick cottage, I'd be demanding to get my front yard back. And doing anti-rain dances.

The Egyptian Building

The Egyptian Building
East Marshall and College Streets

This building is not going to be torn down. It is on the National Register. So fooey on the university developers who want to turn everything into parking decks.

The Egyptian Building, of the mummified fence posts, was constructed in 1845 to house what is now the Medical College of Virginia. Unsurprisingly, this Egyptian Revival style never really took off. This building is one of the few examples of this type of architecture. It looks really cool, but I can't imagine what it must have been like in 1845. In Virginia. In the summer. With no air conditioning and not too many windows. Presumably the medical students were doing medical student stuff with dead bodies and didn't bathe regularly either, so it must have been pretty ripe in there. I've been in residential buildings constructed about this time and they incorporated many features to help people get through the summers, like ten foot high windows and lots of cross ventilation to keep the air moving on through. I think that the Masons (Of course they were Masons!) got a little too excited when they designed the Egyptian Building.

Different sources refer to the capitals as lotus buds, or palm leaves, but I think they're really papyrus. The winged disk of Horus is all over the place too.

The interior is "Egyptian" too, but this only dates to the renovation that was done back in 1939. This picture was taken through the door with a long exposure. I'm planning to infiltrate that auditorium at some point to see what the architectural designers did in there. Out in the entryway, the floor has a giant scarab inlaid in the tiles (that picture didn't come out at all). The glimpse of the coffered ceiling is pretty tantalizing too. How can I resist going back for more?

The joy of art deco (?)

Nursing Education Building
East Broad and College Streets

Built in 1928 (that's what's on the cornerstone), this building was originally called Cabaniss Hall, but now there's a different building by that name. It currently houses administrative offices of the nursing school and some classrooms. This is another one of the buildings that the university will be knocking down if they have their way. They say that these older buildings can't be renovated to have modern ventilation systems, etc.

What I really like about this one is the tiling around the top. (I realize this is not a very valuable architectural analysis.) Supposedly it's inspired by the Italian Renaissance style. Now that I look more closely, I can see Corinthian capitals on the brick engaged columns in the central part of the façe. I should probably try and get a better shot of them. I missed them on the days when I was taking pictures because I was so taken with the polka dot tiling.

Triple word score

North Twenty-sixth Street between Grace and Franklin

I can't imagine why anyone would be playing Scrabble in the middle of the road. This tile has been embedded between the pavers for months, years maybe.

This is the one block on Church Hill with the original spallstone paving. When the city comes and does utility work on the gas lines and water mains, they always have to put the stones back down or the community association goes on the warpath. Seriously, tomahawks and everything.

Actually, I'm lying. But the idea of a bunch of irate homeowners and preservationists descending on city hall with stone age-style weapons amuses me.

Meanwhile, north of Broad Street, someone wants to Stop Gentrification.

This block looks pretty good to me. The fewer crack houses, the better, I always say.

Reptilian glee

Entrance to the A.D. Williams Memorial Clinic and Laboratories
1201 East Marshall Street

We found various interesting architectural details around West Hospital, the "brick monstrosity" as Oz calls it. I guess the longer you look at it…

The A.D. Williams clinic is tucked around behind West Hospital and, although it appears to be a mere appendage thereto, was actually built a few years earlier. The cornerstone says 1936. According to the MCV timeline, the laboratory and outpatient clinic opened in 1938 with the construction having been funded by the Public Works Administration. The vertical pillar standing out in the sidewalk supports a skywalk that connects the clinic with a newer hospital building across the street. This building is also slated for destruction by the university.

I really like the snake. It looks very enthusiastic about that staff.

After I took these pictures, I started wondering why there is only one snake per staff rather than two, which is what I recall seeing on various other medical insignia. A few minutes of research resulted in a plethora of material on the subject. In a nutshell, the double serpent staff is associated with Hermes and has commercial and occult connotations (which might explain my health insurance policy), while the single serpent staff is the insignia of Asklepios, a Greek physician who ended up being deified (the whole son-of-Apollo deal) as the god of healing, with all kinds of spectacular cures to his credit.

One snake is better than two, then, but why does this one look so jolly?

Not your ordinary fence posts

Fence around the Egyptian Building
East Marshall and College Streets

This is some kind of record—two homework-free weekends in a row. With the extra time we decide to go take some pictures of neat architectural things downtown, particularly those facing imminent destruction. The Egyptian Building is on the National Register, so it is certainly not in danger, but I love photographing this building and its surroundings. I'm not the only one, either.

The Egyptian Building is an Egyptian Revival structure that was built in the mid-nineteenth century to house what is now the Medical College of Virginia. It is very much the Victorian idea of what ancient Egyptian stuff looked like and the fence is no exception. I wonder why they thought that mummy cases were appropriate dér for a place where one is learning the healing arts. Then again, this was the nineteenth century and they were still catching on to the idea of washing their hands before surgery, so maybe receptacles for dead people are in order.

I've walked by the mummy cases many times, but I think today is the first time that I notice the feet poking out the bottom.

Okay, so the Victorians put feet on all their furniture. But not human feet. Not human feet sticking out of coffins.

Perspective

It's very difficult to photograph very large structures from when you're practically standing beneath them. If you can't get anything else in the pict