Category: Life

Colin’s Last Day – Toledo Lounge

This fine gentleman here is soon off to school again to pursue even higher education.  He held a little soiree at a local "dive bar" (in quotes because they are trying to be a dive bar). We then had falafel at Amsterdam Falafel.  If you haven't been, you need to stop reading this and go get yourself a falafel.  I'm always too excited and hungry to photographically document this place. After that, we played charades in the street.  This group is really big on charades and some of us are scary good at it.  I only have photos of Colin going but we all took turns. A bit earlier in the evening, I had decided to walk from L'Enfant Plaza up to Adams Morgan.  It's about 4 miles.  See, the problem is that I always get off work earlier than everyone else.  My (day) job is cool like that.  So I took a little photowalk.  Here are some people waiting for the bus: I was sitting inside a Borders when I took this, so I don't know if I get to count it as "street photography."  There's something perhaps a bit sneakier or even ballsier involved there. And I'd also like to show you this picture, not because it's so great, but because it represents the very first time I have been wrongfully harassed about taking photographs!  I just let it go when he asked me to stop - I had already gotten my shot - but I know my rights and so should every other photographer.  If you don't, look here (pdf).
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by Amber Categories: Life

Bees and Sunflowers

George and I are sharecroppers.  We pay to rent someone else's land, then do what we will with the produce... at our local community garden.  I put our name on a list and a year later we got accepted.  At first, it was very exciting.  And then we realized that the weeds never, ever stop coming.  Our garden is now a horrific mess of a place.  We never work on it.  It always needs water.  It certainly didn't help that our enormous cherokee purple tomato plant only gave us two usable tomatoes.  The other two were eaten by birds and the plant hasn't seen fit to set any more fruit. But sometimes, when you're visiting in the morning, before the heat of the day makes the trip unbearable, you come across about a million bees hanging out on the sunflowers, dancing around in the beautiful morning light, and you have to take a picture (or two).
Permanent link to this post (157 words, 1 image)
by Amber Categories: Life

Trivia Night – Super Grain

My friends are dorks, what can I say?  Some of us are dorky in the socially awkward sense (hand up) and others of us are dorky in the huge-repository-of-random-knowledge sense.  The Random Knowledge guys destroy trivia nights all over this town.  The rest of us have a few beers and struggle to fill in the gaps. Last night we came in third at 51st State, which did not earn us any bar credit.  It's a very dark bar so I've jacked up the exposure, on top of ISO800.  I kind of like the grain - gives it a good gritty feel. On the street, the colors were really weird but kind of neat also. And because I love you (and me), here's a self-portrait I took while waiting for George to do some stuff at his work.  I'm not allowed in because he has one of those no-guests-allowed government jobs.  So I sat in the car and took pictures of myself.  It's a pretty standard situation. Also, you see those glasses there?  I bought them online.  They're supposed to be these nifty new "transitions" lenses.  Only they seem to have permanently transitioned.  They get darker in the sun and lighter indoors but they never seem to go all the way back to clear.  It really emphasizes the dorkiness.
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by Amber Categories: Life, Self-Portraits