Well, it’s not a Chinese wall, obviously, but it is a wall. And a natural phenomenon, light reflected on the wall filtered by the patterns of tree branches, ends up looking LIKE Chinese characters. They’re obviously not real Chinese characters, but they have a very calligraphic feel to them.
I was out on a photo-walk after work the other evening and wandered through Georgetown with the Rolleiflexes. I walked down under the Whitehurst and through the riverfront park. If you pass beyond the end of the park, you go under Key Bridge and come to the boat houses. Across the street from the boathouses where you can rent canoes, kayaks and stand-ups to take out on the river, there are stairs that take you up to the level of the C&O Canal. There’s the remains of the Alexandria Aqueduct Bridge that crossed the Potomac just past the Potomac Boat Club building. The Aqueduct Bridge was originally built in the 1860s to carry canal boats from the C&O Canal to the Alexandria Canal. Later it was improved by adding a road bridge and a deck for electric trolley cars. It was demolished in the 1930s to make way for Key Bridge (which was so named to honor Francis Scott Key, the author of the US National Anthem, whose house was demolished to make room for the bridge). The Alexandria Aqueduct Bridge piers are a popular spot for young people to hang out, especially in the summer time.
I went out to the end of the pier with the thought of getting a shot of the west-facing side of Key Bridge while it was still illuminated by the setting sun. A bunch of teenagers were hanging out there. Another woman photographer who was there coincidentally at the same time and I were both out on the end of the pier, shooting the bridge and the riverscape. One of the teens asked what we were doing. The woman ignored him, but I told him I was taking pictures of the bridge, and whatever else struck my fancy. He returned his attention to his friends and the scene in front of them. Looking down, I saw this scene through the viewfinder of my camera and quickly composed the shot. While I’m not normally a big gear geek (at least in my writings- I hope!), this is one case where I will geek out on my hardware and talk a bit about the choices I made.
I had been wanting for a long time to capture scenes like this – something suggestive, a little mysterious, a little ethereal, where the viewer can insert themselves into the scene. I haven’t always been successful, at least not to the degree I was looking for, and hadn’t really hit upon the right combination of toys and technique to make it happen. Well, I’ve obviously found it. The camera is my Tele-Rolleiflex, coupled with the Rolleinar 0.35 close-up attachment. For whatever reason when they made the original Tele-Rolleiflex, Rollei limited the minimum focus distance to roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters). By itself, this makes the Tele-Rollei rather limited in usefulness especially as a portrait camera. To compensate for this, Rollei made available the 0.35 and 0.70 Rolleinar close-up attachments. Since one of my ambitions for the Tele was doing portraits, I felt it was incumbent upon me to acquire at least the 0.35, which I have, and used on this shoot. The net effect of the Tele plus the Rolleinar is seen here, and in the next image. They give an extremely soft, dreamy look to the out-of-focus background areas.
Being able to create that extremely shallow depth-of-field combined with the extremely soft out-of-focus area throws the “3-D” effect into high relief, and lends itself when used appropriately to creating fantastical scenes like the one above where the bridge in the background, while very distinct, is sufficiently soft and far-away-looking that it could be real or it could be a dream – which it is remains for the viewer to decide. Thus the title of the image.
At the same place and same time, I turned around to look up the river and saw a trio of very blond, very Germanic-looking young folks (Georgetown University students? Youth tourists?) sitting on the edge of the stone walkway. This boy turned sideways to look at the girl beside him and was momentarily caught with soft, subtle backlighting. If you look carefully you can make out some more kids lounging on the opposite side of the old canal bed. It’s a very romantic, mysterious, suggestive composition – what is he looking at out of the frame? Where is he? Why is he there?
It’s all about the repetition of patterns and shapes and angles.
Just a few more shots of the fountains at the Watergate apartment complex. Today, it sits in a prestigious location with beautiful river views. It was sited on former industrial land – it sits now where the Washington Gas Light plant used to be, and next door, where the Kennedy Center now sits, was a brewery. The complex was designed in part to harmonize with the Kennedy Center, which was originally envisioned to be curvilinear and organic. Later, due to construction costs, it was redesigned into the sharp-edged rectangle that it is today.
There is debate over the origin of the name Watergate – there are multiple possible referents. Part of the land the complex was built on belonged to the C&O Canal, and overlooks the water gate that marks the eastern terminus of the canal and where its water rejoined the Potomac. A second candidate is the “water gate” from the Potomac to the Tidal Basin that regulates the flow of water into the basin at high tide. The third candidate is the steps down to the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial beside Memorial Bridge, which was used from the 1930s to the 1960s as an outdoor concert venue, with performers located on a barge in the river. Concerts ended in 1965 with the advent of jet aircraft service into National Airport. I vote for the C&O Canal as the source of the name – the other two features are obscured from view of the complex by the Kennedy Center and the natural curve of the river.
The fountains in the complex were specifically designed to create not only a visually pleasing effect, but to also simulate the sound of a natural waterfall.
I don’t know how successful the auditory engineering was (the fountains are pretty quiet, and they sound like fountains to me), but they certainly do create a visually pleasing space as well as a moderating effect on the temperature around the courtyard.
The Watergate complex was the first mixed-use development in the District. It had shops, restaurants, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, commercial office space, and even a hotel, in addition to luxury condominium residences. As originally planned, it was even supposed to have 19 “villas” (read townhouses), be 16 stories tall, and in all occupy 1.9 million square feet. After wrangling with codes, design commissions, and budgetary constraints, it was reduced in height to today’s 13 stories, the villas were eliminated, and the total square footage was cut back to 1.7 million square feet.
I know I was being very abstract or at least impressionistic with my earlier Commuter Diaries images, so in that sense these are a break from that line, and don’t quite fit. But they are about the commuting experience, so they have the potential to belong, if I develop enough images for them to blend in and make sense, and aren’t just outliers.
The first one is a woman waiting for the bus at my origin bus stop. Early morning, headphones on, anticipating the impending arrival.
This second one is a gentleman waiting downtown at Metro Center, peering down the street in hopes of spotting which bus is arriving next, anxious for the final leg of his journey home.
I think the latter is more successful because of the stilted angle, which makes it more dynamic and tense. I snuck that one by pointing the Rollei sideways, and had to live with what I got.
I have to keep reminding myself that sometimes it’s good to be loose and free with things, and that not all images have to be tack sharp and perfectly focused to be successful. I’ve been ruminating about this one because the composition is a bit unbalanced, and there’s a little motion blur to it, because it was another grab shot as I walked by and I didn’t have time to perfectly compose and focus it.
I think it’s a good object lesson from the original purpose of the series – taking long exposures that were not planned or structured in any way to free me up from being too formal. Even if this isn’t a fully successful image in some sense, it’s useful as a reminder to be relaxed and open to possibilities.
Yet more in my series of everyday objects. This time, it’s a lamppost, a safety cone (I’m not calling it a traffic cone because in this context, it’s being used to warn pedestrians of an uneven paver), parking meters again, and a police call box. You may have wondered at seeing some of my images with a black border and others without. I generally try to compose full-frame, and I like including the black border to show that. I also feel that in some cases, the black border helps define the image especially if the background is predominantly bright. I don’t ever add one to make it look as if what you see is full frame if in fact it is cropped, or to make you think it was made in a different format than presented. The images I post online for the most part are scanned from the negative, and given the nature of film, sometimes the backing paper leaks light along the edge, or other things happen during processing that require me to crop a little. Sometimes, I have to crop a lot because the composition just wasn’t right in the full square of the 120 image size. In those cases, I leave the edges alone and don’t put a black border on.
If you recall an earlier post, I had some shots of the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture (I’ll call it the African-American History Museum for short) in color, taken as architectural abstracts. Here are a few in black-and-white. The building shape lends itself extremely well to these kinds of geometric abstract studies. I think the architect nailed the design prospectus,making references to the cross-cultural influences of Africa on the American experience.
Seen here against the sky it feels like a seascape, a reminder of the trans-Atlantic voyage that brought three centuries worth of slaves to the New World.
The bronze-colored metal screening on the outside has a tropical botanical motif. It is both protective screen and mask, concealing and revealing, ancient and modern. The patterning is reminiscent of Kente cloth batik designs.
The overall shape of the structure is that of a three-tiered African crown, but viewed from different angles, it can be a monolith or a pyramid, or the prow of a ship.
Here are a few architectural details on the Brewmaster’s Castle, just off Dupont Circle. The house is so named because it was built by Christian Heurich, the founder of Heurich Brewing Company, which operated in Washington DC from the 1880s to 1956. Mr. Heurich ran the company until his death at the age of 102 in 1945. The original company and their brewery are no more, although it has been resurrected under the moniker Olde Heurich Brewing by the great grandson of Christian Heurich, and now produces craft beers under the brand Foggy Bottom. Due to a lack of facilities in Washington, the beers are brewed in upstate New York. The original brewery itself was located where the Kennedy Center now sits.
The house is now a museum and retains an extraordinary amount of the original furnishings and decorations from the period of its creation in 1892-94. The house was bleeding-edge technologically at the time – it had electric and gas lighting, central radiator heating, ventilating skylights for cooling, a pneumatic communication system, an elevator, and even a central vacuum for cleaning. The structure is made of steel and reinforced concrete to be fireproof, and although it has 15 fireplaces, due to the central heating systems, none have ever been used.
The house looms large over the neighborhood, as it is one of the last remaining mansions of the era around the circle (some have been converted to embassies, one is now the Scientology headquarters in DC, and the rest have been demolished and replaced by apartment and office buildings) and it stands out as a period piece quite in contrast to its neighboring structures from the 1950s through the 1970s. I’m fascinated by the decorative ornamental detailing on the house, as well as some of the functional bits, like this bootscrape-
It is built into the base of the column supporting the porte cochere over the carriageway in front of the house. It is, of course, on the outside, and not on the house side of the porte cochere.
The bootscrape is out of view to your left in this scene – this is the entrance portico under the porte cochere. I was drawn to this composition by the repeating and converging curves of the stairs, the carriageway, and the arches of the porte cochere.
Looking up, this is one of the gargoyles on the outer edge of the porte cochere, and behind it the ornamental spire on the turret that inspired the house’s nickname, Brewmaster’s Castle.
Turning around and looking down, the service spaces are equally detailed, and the innovative thought behind the construction is in evidence.
The trade entrance has TWO wrought-iron gates, one at the top and another at the bottom of the stairs.
The sidewalk doesn’t pull right up to the foundations, but rather a sinuous cobblestone gutter system surrounds the house, providing adequate drainage so the basement doesn’t flood in a storm.
The house is open for tours several days a week. While I haven’t been inside yet, I’m planning a visit soon.
More things from my everyday objects series. These are all things I found around DC in my peregrinations on my way to and from work. They all have a theme of “two” in them – two faces, two paper boxes, two trash cans.
The sibling rivalry is in the two newspapers themselves represented in the two boxes – the Post and the Times. The Post is considered by many to be the “paper of record” for Washington DC, whereas the Times is a partisan hack with an extremely conservative bent, owned by a highly suspect organization (the Unification Church aka the Moonies). Depending on your political bent, the Post is a liberal shill and the Times a bastion of integrity. Either way, they co-exist in a shrinking market and both are struggling to find their feet in the post-internet age.
I call this last one two twins because there was by happy accident two people of parallel size to the trash cans, both striking the same pose in the background. It made for a serendipitous symmetry.
Four more images from my series with K.T. at Land’s End. It’s funny how when you’re shooting, sometimes you’re so in the moment of doing it, you don’t realize the parallels you’re creating. In this first pair, the parallel is obvious.
We had an interesting space to work in, so I had him turn and repeat his pose both front and back. I was thinking of exploiting the cubic volume of the collapsed structure, and contrasting the rectilinear forms of the structure with the organic ones of the body.
The reclining poses are similar as well, but in a less obvious way because the backgrounds are different, as is the placement/emphasis on the figure. In the tree figure, the human form is front-and-center, definitely the main subject of the image. The coarseness of the bark and the wild gnarls of the branches contrast with the contained, orderly, smooth human body draped over them. In the surfside image, the human figure is very much present, and the focal point around which the image is structured, but it blends in to the scene both tonally and formally.
Last but not least, I thought I’d make a diptych out of the two foyer shots, since they so harmonize with each other. I know I wasn’t thinking “Gee, let’s make a diptych out of this!”, or at least not like THIS, when I took them. Back when I took these, I thought almost exclusively as a single-image shooter. Each image was a discreet entity, even if part of a narrative series. So I certainly shot them to be a pair, but I would have envisioned hanging them side by side in separate frames. Funny how serendipity works, isn’t it?
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