Photograph of the Landmark Hotel in Charlottesville

Landmark Hotel in Charlottesville

The included photograph is of the Landmark Hotel building in the Downtown Mall area of Charlottesville. The photograph is a time exposure taken at night. The camera used is designed to take architectural photographs. You can take photos of a building and other tall structures without getting the usual distortion (large bottom, small top, and walls no longer parallel).  It has a lens that shifts.

You really need the shift lens camera to get a realistic image of the building because the only other strategy would be a telephoto from a long distance.  This is not workable in the case. There are too many buildings around it that are relatively tall.  

It’s a night photo, and my Son and Daughter in law helped with the camera set up. 

The recent history of the Landmark has been covered by most local publishers, so I won’t even go there.  Visually, it is strikingly higher than the other buildings on the Mall, and the upper stories of the building were only completed but not the exterior framing. Most of us living here no longer see it. It’s now a background element. 

It’s on my track for coffee refills  so I often pass up the street by it. On windy nights the left over cables hanging from the higher floors make a clanging noise.  It’s eerie, maybe a bit like what a ghost ship at sea might sound like.  

Charlottesville City Market, Then and Now

I moved to Charlottesville in 1979 and the City Market was already in operation.  I started going to the market in the mid 80’s when it was relatively small compared to its current size. The two tiers of upper parking were filled during the beginning of the growing season, but cooler days early and late in the season would sometimes have fewer vendors.  The picture below comes from one of those times.

The apparent model behind the cardboard background and the rolling lawn chair was that it was a “ride.” Kids that decided to take the ride got wheeled around in the cardboard “thing” with the bearded fellow pushing the cart. All the other parties contributed noises by hitting items they had or making some creative vocal sound effects. No, I can't explain this event. 

The current City Market is really packed with vendors, and they spread over the road below the block now. We were looking for wildflowers (or just flowers without pedigree).  There were plenty, and we walked out with a bougainvillea in a hanging pot.  As far as food goes, you can get it to eat there, or bring it home.

This year brought more food stands (at least at this point in the season) and most were selling locally grown produce. 

 One of the stands we were looking for was selling early season flowers. We got enough for a small vase on our porch, and a Bougainvillea already planted in a pot with a hanger. That went on the front porch. I noticed that the sellers had someone in the back putting together flowers, as they were going like hotcakes (pictured below).

Another long term vendor at the City Market is C. L. Morton, who is a specialist in growing Dahlias. 

Dean Family Cemetery Photos



View of the Entire Cemetery

Linen Flower  

 These photographs are of Dean Cemetery, which is within the Shenandoah National Park. It’s completely surrounded by the Park property. An arrangement between the Park and family members allows them to keep the cemetery there as long as they agree to maintain it.
It’s at mile marker 63.2 in the Central District of the park. The earliest birth date belongs to James Dean (born 1797 and died 1862). The range of time of the cemetery is remarkable. There are a few new stones, one with a photograph of a couple embedded into the stone. It’s not a small graveyard, and it’s very open, with trees cleared around the perimeter.

The process which was used to “relocate” the people living within the park boundaries has become a discussion in recent years. The National Park Service web site has an article by Audrey J. Horning, of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and The Queen's University of Belfast. It really shows that the way the “people from the hollows” were described at the time was far from the truth. http://www.nps.gov/shen/historyculture/displaced.htm There is also an article by The Hook (a Charlottesville weekly) that adds much more detail about the deals made around the creation of the park. http://www.readthehook.com/98743/mountain-folk-maligned-pork-propaganda-and-creation-cool-national-park . Creation and Dispossession: Shenandoah National Park and its Residents

Camellia Lit by Flashlight

The Camellia in the front yard once again bloomed with a snowfall following the next day.  I had wondered what would explain the early arrival of the blooms, which would probably doom it in more northern areas.  Wikipedia to the rescue: the source of the plant is the Himalayas.
 
The photo was taken at night by leaving the camera shutter open and selectively adding light (often called painting with light) with flashlight.

Ed Deasy

Tiny Flower

I was nosing around with the macro lens in the feral ivy patch below the shed (which was an outbuilding of a garage, located there many years ago), when I came across this little flower.  If you had the perspective of the flower it would have been an eerie experience.  A huge spherical glass would have broken through the clouds and leaves, and you would have seen the tiniest reflection of yourself.  Then there would have been the massive clunk noise of the shutter, like a door being slammed in heaven.

Lately I’ve been lurking around in the shadows, looking for night photographs. This one is beyond the exit ramp from the parking lot of Whole Foods. It’s the rear of the store’s parking lot, just off the ramp to the exit. The two walls of the building are a public face on the left, with an “alley” on the right. A car came through and left a track of lights. The radical difference between the two walls of the one building comes from the lighting. The right side is sodium vapor (warm), the left side is mercury (a small, bluish, swatch of the spectrum). Light comes from poisonous metals.  Not all light, mind ye.

I’m really trying to process these so that they look close to what it looks like to my eye.  I’m a night walker; I use the exercise and the difference sense of space as a “place” to think (wonder).

I tried to find an overview in Google Maps. I did, but the buildings roofs looked new and freshly painted. It turned out the copyright statement at the bottom had the image copyright date as 1994. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and there hasn’t been any money floating in it. So maybe a new-style WPA project will be painting the roofs white in all the big boxes that stretch from coast to coast.

Goodbye Vivian

Goodbye Vivian was taken on the long way to anywhere, Route 301, as it snakes through the infinite tidal flat lands. When this sign worked its way over the horizon, I was a bit struck by the personal tone. Surely it was for a goodbye party, or a retirement. Maybe they didn’t have enough letters to make a longer message.  There’s a song called "Goodbye Vivian" but the sign predates it by many years. It made me sad to know that Vivian had already left. I pulled in the empty parking lot, got out, took the picture, sat in the car for a while. 


The color in the photo: courtesy of Kodak and Kodachrome. Its was always a bit too vivid.