I went down to Richmond, Virginia over President’s Day weekend back in February to take a mini-vacation. I brought along my then new-to-me Pentax 67 and my trusty Lomo Belair X/6-12. Thank heaven I brought the Lomo along because I managed to get one and a half rolls out of the Pentax before the battery died and the mirror locked up. It’s going to be going off to the repair shop soon. What I did get out of the Pentax was brilliant, and I’ll share those in another post. So I at least had one working camera with me, even if it is a rather specialized one, and I made the best out of the situation and shot an entire trip in panorama mode.

One evening I took the camera out and did some twilight shots – all hand-held, along Broad Street in downtown Richmond. The Lomo is very good for that kind of shooting, and I apparently have hands of steel when it comes to doing slow shutter speeds. The Lomo doesn’t tell you what speed it’s using, but some of these shots were anywhere between 1/15th and 1 second. I tried one or two that went past 1 second but I’m not THAT good.

Broad Street is the main axis street through Richmond – it starts near the Virginia Capitol building and heads west, running for miles out into the Richmond suburbs. These shots were all taken within a few blocks of each other, around the East/West Broad dividing line.

The above image was a happy accident- a triple exposure of the theater building, the bus station, and the window of Tarrant’s, a turn of the 20th century drugstore turned New Southern cuisine restaurant (and the home of my absolute favorite chicken-n-waffles anywhere so far! … well, the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond did them better, but they don’t offer it on their menu any more, BOO HISS…)

West Broad was once the commercial and business heart of Richmond, and like so many urban centers in the second half of the 20th century, it took a downturn. Now it is being revived with art galleries and artists studios, boutique businesses and hotels, and upscale condos and loft apartments. For those who love urban grit, though, there’s plenty of that left if you want it.