Ok, this one gets its own shot because it’s just too cool for school and doesn’t play well with others. I was up in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend. I rented an apartment on Fort York Boulevard, right down by Lake Ontario. The apartment had a view of the downtown skyline, including the CN Tower, which is the tallest structure in North America, and if I recall correctly, the 15th tallest in the world. As such, it attracts lightning strikes. I was lucky enough to be there for a late-summer thunderstorm, and to photograph it through my apartment window during that storm, and catch a shot of the CN Tower getting struck.
CN Tower, Lightning
I promise you it was far more impressive in person than it is in the photo.
These two portraits are natural light portraits I took of my parents in their kitchen. These were play-around shots with my Contax RTS III and the 50mm f1.4 Planar lens for it. I wanted to see what the out-of-focus areas looked like when shot wide open. I think the shot of my mom with my dad in the background has an extremely painterly quality to it and really shows off the lens’ capability. Now it makes me want to use that lens more!
The grille of a 1947(I think – might have been a 46 or a 48) Lincoln Continental. The hood is raised in this shot to show off the engine.
Lincoln Continental Grille
a 1950 Ford hotrod. Note the modern steering wheel and stereo alongside the otherwise traditional dashboard.
50 Ford Hotrod Dash
The Lincoln Continental had it’s spare tire mounted on the rear instead of in the fenders, the “continental” style. I’m not sure if the name had anything specific to do with the choice of how to mount the spare tire or if that was coincidence. The downside is that mounting the spare that way makes access to the otherwise commodious trunk rather difficult, as you have to lift your bags and parcels over the spare to access the top-loading trunk. I drove a 1962 Nash Metropolitan in high school that had a similar spare tire mount, the only thing keeping it from being a royal pain was the fact that the car and the tire were small enough that it was easy to clear the tire. For awkward cargo, the seat-back folded down to allow easier entry to the trunk.
Lincoln Continental Tire
Not your neighbor’s BMW – this is the hood of an Isetta, a post-war compact BMW that is very much a spiritual ancestor to the Smart car, except it was made by BMW, and had a front-opening door to which the steering wheel and speedometer were attached and swung out of the way to grant access. Not exactly a 5-star crash safety rating. Isettas are climbing in value now, but I can remember when they were not much more expensive than my Met.
Isetta Hood
The fuel cap to a replica AC Cobra. The original AC Cobras are now so valuable (a vintage 427 Cobra is well north of $500K, and with racing history or other special qualifications, they sell for over $1M!) that probably 99% of the ones you will see on the road and 90% of the ones at car shows are replicas. This one happened to be an exceptionally well made replica with highly accurate details, like the fuel filler cap.
Sometimes, I do actually break out the 35mm and shoot. These were all taken at a local car show, playing around with my Contax RTS III and the 50mm f1.4 Planar lens. I think you really can tell a difference between shots taken with the RTS III and other 35mm cameras because of the vacuum film pressure plate – sucking the film perfectly flat at the time of exposure does lead to a sharper negative overall, or at least takes the film’s flexibility out of the equation and lets the lens shine through. These were taken with my favorite color negative film, Kodak Ektar 100.
I just love the simplicity of the Corvette rear end design in this composition – the field of cream yellow, offset by the curve of chrome and the two red taillights reflected in the bumper. It doesn’t get much better than this.
Corvette Bumper
Aah, classic design. The Art Deco glory that is the Cord 810 convertible. Considering how rare and expensive these are, the owner/driver gets a lot of credit for driving it to and from the show. I saw him later that afternoon, pulled over with the hood up, so that dashed my fantasies of having one as a daily driver. But it’s still a glorious car to see on the road today.
Dashboard, Cord 810
Another vintage dashboard, from a Porsche 356. Very clean, very simple, no clutter to distract from the driving experience.
Porsche Steering Wheel
I was racking my brain to remember what car this was exactly. It’s British, 1950s, with a big (for the time and place) engine. I was thinking Jensen, or BRM, but I think Jensen was 60s and 70s, and BRM mostly did racing cars. Then it struck me – it’s a 1950s Bristol four-place coupe. They were fast, luxurious GTs in their day, and somewhat rare, especially on this side of the pond.
Bristol Dash
Here is the engine compartment of the Bristol. A big inline 6-cylinder topped by three magnificent carburetors. It’s almost sculptural.
Bristol Engine
The modern contingent – a Ford GT, the modern recreation of the 1960s GT40 race car, but this one is street legal, and fully civilized on the inside with working A/C, radio, and leather seating.
Ford GT40
And last but not least, what car show would be complete without a Ferrari or two? This is the dashboard of a Ferrari 250 Berlinetta, as seen through the window glass.
This didn’t really ‘fit’ with any of the other neighborhood photo groups I posted earlier, so it’s getting its own post. The Industrial Bank branch at 11th and U Streets NW is the original location for Industrial Bank, which was founded to cater to the African-American community in the early 20th century when many mainstream banks wouldn’t lend money to black people. They have kept the vintage neon sign with the clock outside, probably a 1930s addition from the look of it. They never light the neon, though. The clock does work, but nobody seems to be bothered enough to get the time right. When I took this shot it was around 1pm, but the clock says a bit shy of 5pm. But hey, it’s 5pm somewhere!
I think I mentioned this previously – there was a man here in DC who was getting rid of his darkroom and contacted the school where I teach about donating it. He also sent the inquiry out to all the faculty. One of the items he was disposing of was an Oriental Seagull VC-CLS variable contrast cold light head that fit a Beseler 45Mxx series enlarger. I happen to have a Beseler 45-series enlarger, so I told him I would be interested in the head. At the time he delivered it to me, he didn’t have the owners manual with it, but said he thought he still had it and would get it to me if he found it. Being the skeptic that I am about such things (I know myself and my best of intentions), I started searching online for a copy. Nobody had one. I had several requests, though, from folks saying “if you do get it, could you please please pretty please with sugar on top make me a copy”. A few days later, I got an email from the man asking me for my mailing address – he found the manual and would mail it to me. Now I have it and I’ve made a PDF file out of the manual. I’m posting it here for folks who need a copy.
As a side note, I spent half of Saturday this past weekend unpacking and cataloging the darkroom equipment he donated to my school – 16 boxes in all, including some beautiful enlarging easels, a 16×20 print washer, an Omega D-series enlarger with 35mm, 2 1/4 square, 2 1/4 x 2 3/4, and 4×5 negative carriers, and a Beseler 45-series enlarger complete with Adjus-table (a specialized table made to fit the enlarger that would allow you to drop the baseboard so you could make bigger (20×24 or even larger) prints without having to flip the head and do wall projections). Every darkroom accessory you could think of was in this bundle, including the empty 1 gallon and 1/2 gallon chemical storage bottles. The bottles, and the darkroom trays, and everything else for that matter, was packed in styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap sufficient to protect it from a nuclear apocalypse. If I don’t see another styrofoam peanut for a year, it will be too soon.
Another sign of change and transformation is the ebb and flow of graffiti. My latest find was this:
Any Make or Model (Black is Beautiful)
I loved the serendipitous juxtaposition of the advertisement wording for the cellphone repair shop and the graffiti – “Any Make, Any Model… Black is Beautiful”. There’s truth in accidents. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident.
A generic graffiti tag on a bricked-up window of a house. This is casual art, that has its own accidental grace and beauty despite not having any great aspiration beyond marking territory or gang initiation.
Window, Graffiti, 15thStreet
Then there’s graffiti that is transformed from simple defacement by virtue of adopting the form and structure of the object upon which it is inscribed, like this manhole cover.
Graffiti-inscribed Manhole Cover
Some street art I found in Toronto. There’s a point where graffiti transcends defacement of property and really does become art in itself. Graffiti
More graffiti as street art. There is part of this wall that I intentionally cropped out as it makes a statement that I don’t know I’d want to make or pass on (decapitated nude female torso).
Graffiti, Chain Link Fence, Twilight
Back to simplicity, this bit speaks to collective identity questions – the figure transforms the Washington DC city flag of three stars over two bars into a humanoid with a hand for a head. Politics, ethnicity, religion, all rolled into a piece of temporary public art (the wall upon which this figure was painted has been gentrified into several very expensive restaurants).
Graffiti, DC Flag Design, 14th Street
The camera of record is a Rolleiflex 2.8E, and the films used are FP4+ for b/w and Kodak Ektar 100 and Portra 160 for color.
The signs of gentrification, both good and bad, abound in my area. Funky old shops in decrepit buildings are being forced out and razed to be replaced by condos and market-rate rentals at prices I don’t know how anyone can afford and being serviced by shops and restaurants worthy of being spoofed by AbFab. At the same time, the drugs, the street crime, and the random trash are all disappearing too.
SaintEx, 14th Street, from above
I’m not sure Mitoni’s salon is still in business, or if it is, for how much longer. But I’ve not been sure if it is in business for the last decade, frankly. Regardless, it will shortly be going away to be replaced by an 8-10 story condo/retail complex.
Mitonis Salon, 14th Street
You can very clearly see the layers of old and new, gentrified and recycled here. A former post office (that was once notorious for a rat infestation that destroyed tens of thousands of pieces of undelivered mail) is now a trendy taqueria. An old antiques store is now the Policy restaurant and bar with the roof deck you can see. In the upper left background is the old cold storage facility which oddly enough still rents out storage lockers. Behind the street-level buildings in the foreground is The Louis, a high-rise condo complex with swanky restaurants, coffee shops, and a Trader Joes (which is actually a welcome addition to the neighborhood). This shot was taken from the roof of Room and Board, an upscale furniture shop in what was a long-boarded-up former car dealership building.
T Street, From Room&Board’s Roof
The dining room at Doi Moi, a new Thai/Vietnamese restaurant.
Tables, Doi Moi
Transformer Gallery is one of the pre- to mid-gentrification vestiges. They’re a small space, and perhaps their saving grace is the fact that the space is too small for most developers’ interests. I don’t know how they survive as, from my perspective, a lot of the art they show is hard to sell.
When I took the photo, it was still August, so I thought the leaves made an interesting ironic statement about the nature of the changing neighborhood.
Transformer Gallery, Premature Fall
The Fabulous Vegas Lounge is another vestige of the old neighborhood. They must own their building to have outlasted the condo buildings that went up around them. It’s been a Jazz club since the 1970s at least.
The Fabulous Vegas Lounge
As usual, all photos taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E, on Ilford FP4+.
I went out on one of my neighborhood walkabouts and found these scenes. I’m still not good with getting people’s faces in street photos because when I try for a portrait, it inevitably becomes non-candid because I take too long trying to compose and focus, they see me, and at best the moment is lost. So I do photos of people from behind. Maybe I’ll work on making it into a thing.
Shopping Couple, U StreetMan With Bags, 14th & U Street
Scenes with activity in them, though, work better. I guess because I’m standing off at an angle to the action and people can pass through without being aware, so they get included from a variety of angles.
Dolcezza GelateriaCrown Pawn
And sometimes they get included because they’re completely unaware of the camera’s presence, like the worker inside Ben’s Chili Bowl.
Ben’s Panda
All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E on Ilford FP4+. The Ilford FP4+ is part of a large stash of it that I bought more than a few years ago when there was a scare that Ilford would go out of business. I bought a box of 100 rolls (B&H was running a special on the bulk lot). Well, Ilford stayed in business (thank heavens!), and my use of medium format waned for a while (I sold off my Hasselblad outfit to finance a large format camera), so the bulk lot sat in my basement, going past its expiry date. Now that I’ve found and fallen in love with the Rollei, I’m finally making a dent in that box. It’s a great compliment to the quality of Ilford that I can still use this film this many years past the expiration and I have yet to need to tweak the chemistry to compensate for the film’s aging.
I was out doing some more street shooting in my neighborhood and found a couple more “ordinary objects” that cried out for portraits. I’ve included some of my past ones here to provide some context for the project idea.
Triple Meter, 14th StreetElectrical Box, 13th & U StreetsMailboxYellow Postbox, ParisHydrant, ChalonEveryday Objects – PayphoneSiamese SpigotTraffic ConeTwin Parking MetersMueller Hydrant, K Street, DC
These were shot on a mix of films – the black and white are either Kodak Tri-X or Ilford FP4+, and the color shots were taken with Kodak Ektar 100, all using my Rolleiflex 2.8E.
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