Day 26 - East Street in Frederick

My walk today was along East Street along the edge of downtown Frederick, MD.  There does not seem to be a West Street, but East Street is long and down the center of it are the remains of old trolley tracks.  I parked in a trendy little shopping area called Shab Row and then walked north on East Street, passing a bakery, a railroad museum, car repair shops, a welding company, and other businesses.

The farther north I went, the more "industrial" the area got, with remnants of old factories and warehouses that now house antiques shops and one business that specializes in custom countertops.  A new restaurant by Bryan Voltaggio of Top Chef fame has opened in a former car dealership.  Farther down East Street I found a shopping center with a bead shop, a Family Dollar store, an insurance business, and more.

I crossed the street and came back down the other side of East Street, passing a laundromat, a hobby store, a Chinese restaurant, and an antiques dealer called Great Stuff by Paul.  

I passed a 7 ft. high rock wall that enclosed a cemetery, so I thought that would be a good place to try out the flip screen on my camera.  I placed the camera on top of the foot thick wall, with the screen angled down so that I could see it.  The camera wanted to focus on the top of the wall that it was sitting on, so I set the camera for manual focus and using the view in the flipped down screen, pressed the multifunction dial until the graves in the distance came into focus.  Mind you, this is all accomplished with me standing on my tiptoes, holding the camera on the top of the wall high above my head.  I pressed the shutter and hoped that the shot was successful.  I think it was.  This technique could be useful for spying over fences and around corners, I suppose.

I finished my 45 minute walk with ice cream at a shop in Shab Row.

This fading trumpet flower looked like it was made out of fabric.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.
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Visit my web site: camscamerashots.zenfolio.com

Cam's rules for the Daily Photo Walk:

1. walk every day
2. the walk must be in addition to any other planned activity for the day
3. post a photo every day
4. use my Nikon P7100 (it is a very convenient size and weight)
5. no weather excuses
6. walk only where it is safe to do so

Day 23 - Greenview

Because I have a really full day planned, I decided to do the first post about a walk in my neighborhood, which is formally known as "Signature Club at Greenview."  

It is a beautiful Ryan Homes community in New Market, MD, for residents 55 and older.  Even though some may confuse this kind of community with a retirement community, and even my daughters jokingly refer to this neighborhood as "the old folks home," the truth is that we are all so busy with working, volunteering, traveling, socializing, exercising, etc., that the times we usually see our neighbors is when they are coming or going.  My own daughters realized early on that if they wanted to spend time with me, they needed to get it on my calendar.  I think that is true with the majority of the residents here.

The street I live on borders a farm, and there are often spectacular morning sunrises with fabulous mists in the low-lying parts.  I'll get up really early one morning for my walk and take some of those pix.

There is a lot of construction going in here in the neighborhood.  New homes are selling quickly here, and even ones that are for resale generally don't stay on the market for very long.

Signs of fall are everywhere.  

This morning was the kind of morning that you start out with a sweatshirt and a scarf at the beginning of your walk, but by the end of it, both scarf and sweatshirt are tied around your waist.

Now I'm off to the rest of my busy day!

Click on any photo to enlarge it.
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Visit my web site: camscamerashots.zenfolio.com

Cam's rules for the Daily Photo Walk:

1. walk every day
2. the walk must be in addition to any other planned activity for the day
3. post a photo every day
4. use my Nikon P7100 (it is a very convenient size and weight)
5. no weather excuses
6. walk only where it is safe to do so

Day 7: Westminster, MD

Today is an absolutely glorious day, weather wise.  Blue sky, low humidity, puffy white clouds, temps in the 70's.  The kind of day when you wish you had a red convertible and no timeline.  Well, guess what!  I did!

 

My plan for today was to go to a rubber stamp show (I make handcrafted greeting cards) in Westminster, a show I have attended before and at which I usually find great new stamps to add to my collection.  I was on the hunt today for masculine stamps, to aid in the community service project that some friends and I do to support Operation Write Home (www.operationwritehome.org).  I did find some great stamps, including golf, steam locomotives, and fishing.

 

Before the show, I parked the car in downtown Westminster, (www.westgov.com) which is the county seat of Carroll County, and home to McDaniel College, formerly Western Maryland College.  Then I set off down the street.

Sidewalk joint, not a curb.

Sidewalk pennant

When walking in older

small towns and neighborhoods, it is important to keep an eye out for trip hazards.  They are everywhere, so look down and ahead frequently, or you may end up on the pavement.  Also, there were obvious signs that I was in a college town, because pennants periodically pointed the way to McDaniel.

 

Westminster's historic downtown consists of many long blocks strung together, with a mix of professional, residential, and commercial use buildings, but nothing appeared to be clustered centrally.  It was anchored on one end by the majestic campus and on the other end by a not-so-majestic Sheetz convenience store.  Not much was open on a Sunday morning, but occasionally I would hear church bells on my hour long walk, and one or two cafes had morning patrons drinking coffee.  I'm sure all the college students were still asleep.

 

I found two things on my walk that were surprising to me.  First, I encountered a number of ginko trees.  In fact, there were many trees along Main Street, thanks to a streetscaping project in the mid 1990's.  Second, I found not one, but two phone booths!  They were British style, obviously old and imported, but sadly, no phones inside. 

 

I enjoyed my walk in Westminster, and I'm sure I will return again.

 

 

 

 

 

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Visit my web site: camscamerashots.zenfolio.com

Cam's rules for the Daily Photo Walk:

1. walk every day
2. the walk must be in addition to any other planned activity for the day
3. post a photo every day
4. use my Nikon P7100 (it is a very convenient size and weight)
5. no weather excuses

Day 4: Networks for Learning

Today I helped to take down the camera club's summer show, which hung at Frederick Community College for more than a month.  The summer show was a juried competition, and once again, I was in awe of the talent that our club members have when it comes to photography.  There was not a piece in the gallery that I would not have been proud to hang on a wall in my home.  Bravo to members of the Frederick Camera Clique - www.frederickcameraclique.org.
If you want to take your photography to a higher level, the best advice I can give you is to hang out with photographers who are better than you are.  Learn from them.  Go on photo shoots together.  Attend gallery openings together.  And where can you find these photographers?  Probably at your local camera club. 
I attribute my growth in the past year to the fantastic photographers that I have met in the club I belong to.  They inspire me every day to become a better photographer -- it's not a competitive thing, at least in my club.  It is a collaborative thing.  Everyone in my club is willing to share with each other and to learn from each other.  It's just a wonderful bunch of people who all share the same passion for photography.

So, because I was at the community college today, I decided to make that the area where I took my photo walk.  Which brings me to another point.  Continuing education classes at community colleges often have some great photography courses.  And in those courses, you meet other photographers.  And so it goes...



While on my photo walks, I am using my new Nikon P7100.
Today I practiced using the macro mode on some of the
landscaping I encountered on my walk.

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Visit my web site:  camscamerashots.zenfolio.com

Cam's rules for the Daily Photo Walk:

1. walk every day
2. the walk must be in addition to any other planned activity for the day
3. post a photo every day
4. use my Nikon P7100 (it is a very convenient size and weight)
5. no weather excuses

Inspiration Comes When You Least Expect It

It took a few days for inspiration to finally gel in my head.  I had seen the signs, but they did not come together for some reason until this morning, Labor Day, 2012.

New Market, MD - September 3, 2012

My friend and fellow photographer, Erin Merritt, began a new Grateful project, where she posts a photo related to a "grateful message" that someone else sent her that day.  A few months ago, she finished a 365 Grateful project, where she posted a photo a day for a year for something she was grateful for.  Yesterday, I again watched the movie "Julie & Julia," where Julie Foster determines to cook one of Julia Childs' recipes every day for a year. 

This morning, it occurred to me that those two things were related -- I needed to complete my own 365 project, too.  But what could it be? 

I have never been an exerciser.  I might make a weak resolution every New Years,  but generally, just going out for a walk for the sake of exercising bores me.  But if you put a camera around my neck, and put me in a small town, I can easily walk for an hour.  So, that's what I decided to do -- a daily photo walk!

I live near New Market, MD, a quaint little town in central Maryland.  I am 12 minutes from downtown Frederick.  And nearby are Libertytown, Brunswick, Walkersville, Burtonsville, Jefferson... 

As I walked today in dripping humidity, I worked out some "rules" in my head.  I will not bore you with those today.  Just know that my top rules are to do a photo walk every day, to post a photo daily on this blog, and to use my Nikon P7100.

I can do this!  Day one is in the books!

Hurricane Sandy Relief: Donate to the Red Cross, and I will mail you a 5 x 7 print from any of the photos I have posted on my blog OR any photo on my website.

Forward to me via email a receipt for donating to the Red Cross. Tell me whether the photo is from the blog or the website, and Include its title along with a mailing address. The name on the receipt to the Red Cross must match the name of the mailing recipient. Send the receipt and the photo request to camscamerashots@gmail.com.