The master at work…
November 14, 2021, 8:52 PM
Most of the time, when I’m doing photography, I only get to see the end result, which typically ends up on my Flickr page, along with other places. It’s far less common for me to see candid shots of myself, just because I’m usually the one doing all of the photographing. But when you go on a trip that is explicitly photography-oriented, and when everyone is shooting, I end up seeing some candid shots of myself. Recently, from October 15-21, Elyse and I went on a trip to North Carolina and Hampton Roads, where we photographed a lot of stuff, some familiar, and some less familiar. The parts of North Carolina that we visited were almost entirely new territory for both of us, while Hampton Roads was a more familiar setting. In North Carolina, we got together with my friend Patrick, whom I’ve known for a very long time, and had a quick meetup with another friend who formerly lived in the DC area. Then in Hampton Roads, we spent time with Aaron and Evan Stone. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the trip itself right now, because I’m working on a much larger photo set about the adventure for the Life and Times section, so for all of the details, stay tuned, but it will be a while before it releases, because it’s going to be a big one. In any case, some of these shots are posed, but a lot of them are candid. If it tells you anything, when Elyse and I were reviewing them on the big screen in the living room, we put on “Yakety Sax” and laughed a lot.
In any case, here they are. These shots were all taken by Elyse, unless otherwise noted.
Group selfie at the North Carolina welcome center on I-95 southbound. From left to right, there’s Elyse, Woomy, David (a clownfish), and me.
Continue reading…Categories: Elyse, Hampton Roads, Myself, North Carolina, Photography, Travel, Woomy
Virginia governor’s race? Not at all surprised…
November 3, 2021, 4:17 PM
On the evening of November 3, I, like so many others, checked in on the various news websites to learn that Republican Glenn Youngkin had defeated Democrat and former governor Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial election. I saw this result, and I was like… meh. The pundits all said it would be close, and the results seem to bear that out, with Youngkin’s winning with 50.9%, McAuliffe’s coming in with 48.4%, with Princess Blanding, who was running on a “Liberation” ticket, taking the remaining 0.7%. In any event, it seems like Youngkin did his homework and pulled it out. It seemed like he had the better campaign overall, while McAuliffe tended to run on, “Hey, remember me? I’m not Donald Trump. I was also your governor back in 2014, and I’d love to have another go at it!” In other words, while McAuliffe may have done his homework in 2013 and come out on top, the same can’t really be said for 2021. I also did quite a bit of traveling through various areas of Virginia during the last few months of the campaign, and I saw way more campaign signs for Youngkin in my travels than I did McAuliffe signs, to the point where seeing a McAuliffe sign in my travels was noteworthy.
Terry McAuliffe’s win in 2013 was unusual because it broke the pattern of Virginia’s voting opposite of the president’s party. Virginia, along with New Jersey, votes for its governor in what is called an “off-year election“, the year after the presidential election. Since Barack Obama had been reelected president in 2012, by the usual Virginia pattern, Republican Ken Cuccinelli should have won. I would suggest that people just didn’t want to vote for someone like Cuccinelli, because based on the public statements that I’d heard him make as attorney general, I had long come to the conclusion that he was nuts.
In any case, the pattern is well-established. Looking through the list of governors of Virginia, the trend of voting opposite the president has been the case since 1977, when Republican John Dalton was elected governor while Democrat Jimmy Carter was in the White House. That followed two other Republican governors that were elected following Nixon victories in the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections, which followed 80 straight years of Democratic control of the governor’s office. Following Dalton’s tenure, there were three more Democratic governors, which corresponded with the Reagan and Bush presidencies. Then there were two more Republicans that corresponded with the Clinton presidency, and then two more Democrats that corresponded with the George W. Bush presidency. The pattern then continued in 2009 with a Republican for Obama’s first term, and then McAuliffe broke the pattern in 2013 during Obama’s second term. After that, the governorship fell right back into the pattern, with a Democrat’s being elected in 2017 while Republican Donald Trump was in the White House. And now the pattern continues, with a Democratic president in Joe Biden, and a Republican governor’s being elected in Virginia.
Categories: State and local politics, Virginia
Exploring the penthouse suite…
October 9, 2021, 10:00 AM
Since last October, whenever Elyse and I have traveled down to Augusta County, we’ve stayed at Hotel 24 South in downtown Staunton. If you’ve followed this site over the years, you might recognize the place. Under its original name, the Stonewall Jackson Hotel (the name was changed to Hotel 24 South in September 2020), I photographed the neon sign that used to be on the roof of the building back in 2007, and my sister had her wedding reception there back in 2010. The building dates back to 1924, and was renovated and expanded to its current form in 2005, restoring its original use as a hotel after having served as an elder care facility for a time.
However, during the 2005 renovation, one section of the building was skipped over: the penthouse suite. As I understand it, the penthouse suite was never available for rental to guests, but rather, was intended as the owner’s private residence. I was made aware of the penthouse’s existence by some friends of mine, and we located the door to access the space on our December trip (the primary focus of that trip was paying last respects to Staunton Mall). At that time, however, the entrance was locked, but we did learn that the penthouse space was excluded from the renovation due to lack of elevator access. On our next visit, in March, they were doing maintenance work on one of the hotel’s elevators (a mechanical room for the elevators is also up there), and as such, the door was open. So Elyse and I took a quick tour of the space before we went out for the day.
My impression of the space, based on the vintage architectural and decorative elements present there, is that it has not been used for anything resembling its intended purpose for a very long time, though it is not abandoned. Rather, it appears that the current hotel management uses the space for storage. The space does have modern ventilation, as evidenced by a modern air duct running through the hallway to the living room, and it did not smell old or musty.
Categories: Staunton
My first true railfan trip…
August 22, 2021, 10:14 AM
I recently came to the realization that it has been a little more than twenty years since my first true railfan trip on the DC Metro system, on July 28, 2001. Mind you, I had ridden the system plenty of times before that, and I had photographed the system a few times prior to this, but this was my first time going in with the rail system itself as the destination, rather than as the means to an end. I explored around in DC and Virginia, photographing stations, making recordings of the door chimes, and exploring new areas of the system that I had never been to before. Back then, there was no Silver Line, the trains were still orange and ran in four and six-car consists, and they stopped in the center of the platforms rather than at the end like they do today. I was using my original Mavica for the photos, which saved photos at 640×480 resolution onto 3½” floppy disks. To record the door chimes, I used a boombox-style tape recorder and recorded it to a cassette.
As I recall, I started at Vienna, stopped off at Virginia Square, went down to L’Enfant Plaza, took the Yellow Line over the bridge to Virginia, got out at Pentagon, checked out the bus bays at Pentagon, briefly took an escalator up into the Pentagon from the station (and then turned around because I didn’t want to visit the Pentagon), went to Pentagon City, visited Pentagon City Mall, then headed to National Airport and Franconia-Springfield. I stopped at Arlington Cemetery station, and then headed towards Vienna, stopping at East Falls Church and West Falls Church along the way. Then I got back in the car and headed down to Woodbridge to visit Potomac Mills, where I was trying to get a new optical drive for my computer. I didn’t find anything at Potomac Mills, but I did remember an optical drive that I had passed up earlier at the Babbage’s store at Pentagon City. So after leaving Potomac Mills, I drove over to Franconia-Springfield and got back on the Metro, riding back up to Pentagon City and buying that optical drive. I then stopped at Crystal City and King Street stations on the way back to Franconia-Springfield.
I had a number of firsts on that trip. I rode between Pentagon City and Franconia-Springfield for the first time, and logged my first visits to Franconia-Springfield, King Street, Crystal City, Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery, Virginia Square, East Falls Church, and West Falls Church. I consider that a pretty good amount of new territory covered.
Categories: Northern Virginia, Washington DC, WMATA
A fence appears around Staunton Mall…
July 17, 2021, 8:44 AM
While Elyse and I were on that trip to Staunton that I discussed earlier, we stopped by Staunton Mall to check in on the progress there. It would appear that the redevelopment plans for Staunton Mall are for real, because asbestos abatement appears to be happening in a few places, and a perimeter has been established around the building in preparation for demolition. Recall that I declared Staunton Mall to be a dead mall back in 2009, but it took until 2020 for the mall to finally close. That fence around the entire mall building, save for Belk, is a major step towards demolition and redevelopment.
Fencing in front of the former Wills/Books-A-Million store.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall
My first time eating at a real restaurant in a very long time…
July 9, 2021, 3:50 PM
Recently, on a trip to Staunton, I had my first meal in a full-service restaurant since my weight loss surgery in December 2019. We were visiting family, as my sister and her husband were in from Chicago. So our party consisted of Elyse and me, my sister and her husband Chris, our parents, and Chris’s parents. Nice group all around. We ate at Zynodoa, which is a higher tier restaurant than I typically go to, but it was a good experience overall.
I would say that the timing of things tended to work against restaurants in general. I had my surgery on December 6, 2019, and so things were still healing for most of December. I was figuring out through trial and error about what foods would be tolerated by my body, and also determining portion sizes. When Elyse and I would go out, we typically would stop in at a grocery store with a food bar if we needed to eat, like Harris Teeter, Wegmans, or Whole Foods. I was typically able to get out of there for about five bucks (I would jokingly refer to myself as a cheap date). Doing that allowed me to try out a variety of different foods, and only get the amounts that I needed (remember, my tummy is tiny now).
Then the pandemic restrictions came along, which took eating in restaurants out of the picture entirely. I’ve never been one to do take-out from restaurants. If I’m eating food from a sit-down restaurant, I’m more than likely going to be eating it at the restaurant. If I’m getting it to go, I’m going somewhere else, like a grocery store or something else cheaper than a full restaurant. Thus if I couldn’t eat on the premises because of various rules in place, a full restaurant was of no use to me. And if I’m getting food to take home, I might as well just eat the food that I already have at home. All of that said, the pandemic rules came about while I was still forming new habits after having my surgery, and that meant that full-service restaurants were more or less out of the picture, i.e. they didn’t exist as far as I was concerned.
Categories: Family, Staunton, Weight loss
When your drone starts to act up…
June 7, 2021, 11:20 AM
On Tuesday, June 1, Elyse and I went on a little adventure in Prince William County, Virginia, where the goal for me was to photograph some old AT&T Long Lines infrastructure up close with the drone. First of all, for those not familiar, AT&T Long Lines is a now-defunct system from the mid-20th century used for telecommunications via microwave transmission. It has long since been replaced by more modern systems, but many of the towers still remain. Some have been converted to cell phone towers, with varying amounts of the old Long Lines infrastructure abandoned in place. I’ve photographed about six of these things in varying degrees of detail, mostly in Virginia, both ground-based and with a drone.
On this particular day, I had two towers in my sights: one near Dumfries, and one near Manassas. The Dumfries one was directly off of Route 234, and the Manassas one was a little bit further off of the beaten path. The Dumfries tower was in full form, with its horn antennas still attached, while the Manassas tower had lost the old horn antennas.
Here are some of my photos of the Dumfries tower:
Categories: Cameras, Northern Virginia
A flight over JMU…
May 15, 2021, 2:12 PM
On May 10, while Elyse and I were on a weekend trip down to the Shenandoah Valley to see the parents and such, we stopped at JMU, and I took the drone for a flight over the far side of campus across Interstate 81. That is a part of campus that has definitely changed since I was a student, as it’s a lot more built up than it used to be. There are lots of buildings over there that weren’t there when I attended. There’s also a new indoor arena over there called the Atlantic Union Bank Center, or, as the folks on Reddit have taken to calling it, the “Algerdome”, after JMU’s current president, Jonathan Alger. I flew from a facility that was new since I was there, on the roof of a massive parking garage next to the Algerdome, built on the former site of Blue Ridge Hall. That higher vantage point was helpful because it gave me a better line of sight to my aircraft and a better signal for my remote, as there were fewer buildings getting in my way up there.
And here are the photos:
Categories: Harrisonburg, JMU, Photography
Paying my last respects to Staunton Mall…
December 14, 2020, 9:00 AM
On a recent trip to Augusta County, Elyse and I stopped over at Staunton Mall to pay our last respects to the place. For those not familiar, Staunton Mall recently changed owners, and in late November, the new owners gave all of the remaining tenants a 30-day notice to vacate, except for Belk. The last day of operation for Staunton Mall will be December 24. So we stopped in and documented the place fairly extensively. Before I get started, please note that this Journal entry will be a very high-level look at the mall. I took over 1,200 photos of the interior and exterior of the mall, including at least one photo of every single storefront, and I’m going to give the place a more complete treatment as a photo set for Life and Times. But this ought to hold everyone for now, because the more complete treatment is going to take a while to put together.
The thing about photographing retail settings is that stores typically don’t like it when you photograph in their facilities. The usual reason cited is to protect trade secrets, which is usually bunk, because, as I understand it, a company has to put actual effort into keeping trade secrets a secret. If it is in plain view of the public, then it is not a trade secret. But that doesn’t stop stores from chasing off photographers. After all, it is private property, and they can choose to exclude whatever activities that they want. For my purposes, it just means that I have to be a bit more stealthy when I photograph, and shoot with my phone rather than with the big camera. The way that I typically operate when I do this is to go from lower risk to higher risk as far as getting caught goes. After all, once a place gets wise to me, the photo shoot is over, because they’ll never leave me alone again as long as I remain there. In this case, since I had the drone, I considered the aerial photography to be the least risky as far as getting caught goes, since I could accomplish that mostly from off of the property. Then after I finished flying around the mall, I photographed the exterior from the car with my real camera. Then I went inside the mall and did my documentation of the interior with my phone. I suspected that I wouldn’t have any issues with security personnel based on reports from others that there were no security people to begin with, and I was pleased that this ended up remaining the case. I’ve seen so many cases where stores and/or entire shopping centers are closing, and employees still get on people about photography. I can’t help in those cases but to think, why do you still care? After all, the people in question are losing their jobs soon, and so they’re continuing to defend their employer because… why? No matter what you do, at the end of the day, you’re still losing your job. So why are you still loyal to and defending a company that clearly has no loyalty to you? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall
Going behind the pylons…
November 19, 2020, 11:31 AM
Back on November 6, Elyse and I took the drone out for a spin again, and I did some photography. This time, we went out to Leesburg, and took a late afternoon golden-hour flight around a familiar landmark: the former Walmart off of Route 15. This is a typical 1990s-era pylon-style store, and it closed in May 2019 when a new Supercenter opened elsewhere in the Leesburg area. Because of the proximity of the location to Leesburg airport, I had to notify the airport of our activity using their online form, and then, whirlybirds away. I flew up and around the building, and even investigated the roof a little bit.
A pre-flight capture, with the HR-V at right.
Categories: Loudoun County, Photography, Walmart
Flying over the Shenandoah Valley with a drone…
October 25, 2020, 10:45 PM
Elyse and I recently made a trip down to Augusta County to see my parents, and we both photographed a bunch of stuff with my drone while we were down there. So all in all, we had a pretty productive time. I have gotten pretty proficient in flying my drone around things, and I’ve gotten some nice photos. The goal of the drone photography this time was to duplicate a lot of what I did in my earlier entry about the area in Microsoft Flight Simulator, but in real life. All in all, I had a good time, and I liked the results, as I flew around Staunton, Waynesboro, Afton Mountain, and Stuarts Draft.
In Staunton, I first got aerials of the old DeJarnette Center, which is an abandoned children’s mental hospital that closed around 1996 in favor of a newer, more modern facility nearby. If this place sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve photographed it before. So here it is:
Categories: Afton Mountain, CFW, Family, Howard Johnson's, Photography, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Walmart, Waynesboro, Woomy
Flying over the Shenandoah Valley…
August 27, 2020, 11:25 PM
Recently, Elyse got a copy of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator game, which, among other things, features real landscapes based on map data. However, it’s not without its issues, since, if it doesn’t have good data for buildings and such, it attempts to fill in the gaps by rendering a building, taking a guess as to what kind of building it’s supposed to be. When there is good building data, the buildings look correct, as is the case in much of Howard County, Maryland. Down in Augusta County, that’s not the case, and most of the buildings are rendered by the game, doing its darndest to make a good guess. To accomplish this evening’s field trip, Elyse dropped us at Eagle’s Nest Airport, which is a privately-owned airport just outside Waynesboro. I didn’t have to fly the plane. Rather, we left the plane on the runway, and just flew around with the camera. I didn’t want to have to fly an airplane, after all. I just wanted to have a little eye in the sky. So from Eagle’s Nest, I quickly got my bearings, and made a beeline to Stuarts Draft.
First thing that I took a look at was my old middle school, Stuarts Draft Middle School:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Harrisonburg, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Video games, Waynesboro
A trip out to Hampton Roads…
April 19, 2020, 10:15 AM
From April 3-6, Elyse and I made a trip to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to visit friends and do some photography. The way I figured, the trip was already paid for, and so as long as we took adequate precautions, I saw no harm in running it as planned. After all, I go out every day to go to work transporting the public, so it’s not like we were “breaking quarantine” or anything, since I’m out in the environment on a regular basis throughout all of this. All that said, if you don’t like that we took this trip, keep it to yourself, because I don’t want to hear about it. On our trip, we stayed in Williamsburg, and had a fun time, mostly photographing architecture and infrastructure with friends Aaron and Evan Stone.
Meanwhile, leaving the house, I had the worst shotgun passenger ever:
I mean, despite his sour disposition, you really didn’t think that we’d take a trip without bringing Woomy along, did you? Elyse quickly threw him out of the front seat so that she could ride, and so Woomy rode in the cup holder.
Categories: COVID-19, Hampton Roads, North Carolina, Richmond, Roads, Ships, Transit, Travel, Woomy
Stack ’em up?
April 1, 2020, 1:25 AM
So my latest experiments with photography have been with stacking exposures. For those not familiar, the general idea behind stacked exposures is to take several short exposures instead of one long exposure, and then “stack” them on top of each other in order to simulate a photo with a longer exposure. It is useful in situations where a true long exposure is impractical, such as when shooting in daylight. The way it’s done is that you take all of the shots that you intend to stack out in the field, preferably using a tripod and a remote control for the shutter, and then do the stacking at home.
Whenever I test a new technique, I typically will shoot photos of something that I’ve photographed before. This way, I already know what the photo is supposed to look like, and I know what works as far as angles go. That eliminates a few variables so that I can just focus on the technique. In this case, I did two field trips. One was out to Point of Rocks and along Route 7 in Virginia and ultimately into DC, and the other was to Burnt Mills Dam off of US 29 in Montgomery County. The Virginia trip was mostly for nighttime shots, and the Burnt Mills trip was for daytime shots.
At Point of Rocks, Elyse went trainspotting at the nearby MARC station while I wandered around with my tripod to photograph some stuff. My focus was on the Point of Rocks Bridge and the Potomac River running under the bridge. My focus was mainly on smoothing out the water.
Categories: Frederick County, Loudoun County, Montgomery County, Photography, Washington DC
The signs of social distance…
March 28, 2020, 12:40 AM
In the era of social distancing brought on by the novel coronavirus, I have definitely observed some changes in how the world looks. As a person who works in an essential industry (people still have to go places, yo), I still get out quite a bit. In my work, service levels have been reduced, and all trains are now eight cars in order to allow people to space themselves out, plus it’s strange to go through some stations in the middle of the day and pick up nobody. It’s also strange seeing the message boards on the Beltway advising people in big letters to stay home. It’s also strange to see so many people wearing gloves and surgical masks, even though those don’t do anything when the general public wears them as a preventative measure, and may actually be harmful if the person wearing them thinks that it excuses them from things like not touching their face, washing their hands, and so on.
In any case, most of the time when I’m going out, it’s to pick up a few things at stores, mostly on my days off of work. The first thing that I noticed was the panic buying, as seen on March 14 at the Target in Rockville:
The toilet paper aisle, picked completely bare.
Categories: COVID-19, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Montgomery County, News