Places

The Autumn of 2005

As we near the autumn of 2012, our thoughts turn inward. We think of colder times ahead and we just want to curl up with a book and a nice cup of tea — or look at memories from bygone years, like photos from the autumn of 2005, taken seven years ago. Most of them were taken in Grosvenor Park, a nice, quiet community in Maryland where we were living at the time. You’ll see Ligia in a few of the photos, sitting quietly at the edge of a pond where ducks were getting ready for their annual migration.

Places

The Autumn of 2006

In the autumn of 2006, I bought a new camera, a Panasonic DMC-FZ20 with a Leica lens, and for the first time in a long time, I was really happy with my pictures. I could use the camera whichever way I liked. The in-camera JPG conversion worked wonderfully and the photos came out looking great. These photos you see here are among the first few hundred I took with that camera. I hope you’ll like them as much as I do.

Now, because there are a lot of them, I’ll only post a few of them large and post the rest as thumbnails. When you click on a thumbnail below, the website will open it up large, in a lightbox, and even let you scroll between them, so enjoy!

Places

Vignettes from DC

Try to guess where these photos were taken; some of the images might be readily recognizable to you if you’re from the DC area. If you’re wondering about the processing, they were captured on 35mm film with an Exakta EXA Ia camera, scanned in from the negatives and edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Kennedy Arts Center, Washington, DC, USA. 35mm film, Exakta EXA Ia.

Odd, triangular pillar, docks, Washington, DC, USA. 35mm film, Exakta EXA Ia.

Bare tree, winter, Washington, DC, USA. 35mm film, Exakta EXA Ia.

Thoughts

In the MINI

One stable element in our life through the past decade has been our 2003 MINI Cooper S. I placed the order for it in the closing months of 2002 and got it in March of 2003, exactly as I wanted it.

Although our life has undergone major changes in those years, and even though the MINI’s had more than its fair share of problems, we kept it. We even brought it over to Romania with us, and it sits in our courtyard right now, just waiting to be driven to some fun place, ready to eat up Transilvania’s twisty roads.

Our car’s seen a lot of ground during its almost 10-year existence. We plan to keep it around so it sees a lot more of this incredible blue world of ours. Even now, as we open its doors and get in, somehow the new car smell hasn’t gone away. The design (both exterior and interior) is still appealing to us. The engine still pulls like a fine horse and it still tears up the curves. And the fact that it’s been with us this long, through thick and thin, through incredible changes, has provided us with no small amount of comfort and it helped ease the transitions that took place in our lives. It’s a keeper.

I took these next few photos in the MINI, as we were driving around DC one winter day, a few years ago, with a 35mm film camera, an Exakta EXA Ia.

Dashboard, 2003 MINI Cooper S. 35mm film, Exakta EXA Ia.

Places

Winter in Cabin John Park – Part 1

These hot summer temperatures are sure making me look at winter photos in a whole new light… So for the next couple of days, I’ll feature winter scenes from one of the parks that we visited a lot while we lived in the DC area: Cabin John Regional Park. Enjoy!