The Stagers

While walking past Campus and Meade this morning, I saw stagers moving furniture into a house “coming soon” for sale. After initially crossing the street, I turned back. The vantage point appealed to me, and Leica Q was in tow. The bold, yellow crosswalk symbols in the foreground are what made the moment worth capturing.

The Featured Image is the original, slightly straightened. Neither this pic, the other, or two crops of both have been retouched. I imported the DNG originals into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and exported as JPEG. Vitals, aperture pre-set for street shooting: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/800 sec, 28mm; 9:49 a.m. PDT.

The crop hides the crosswalk, intending to be yet another showcase of the Leica Q image quality from the 24-megapixel full-frame sensor and 28mm f/1.7 Summilux lens. I’ll take a Prime that lets me crop-in over a telephoto any minute of the day.

The second shot comes from my walking past later, at 10:11 a.m., on the same side of Meade as the building. Vitals are coincidentally identical to the other photo. On that corner, there is an elementary school—out of sight, to my left, when shooting. The intersection is a four-way stop that is vital to protecting the students. When driving anywhere in our neighborhood, I think “kids and cats” and slow down.

The crop captures a moment, beret of context. You could easily think that the homeowners are moving out for the impending sale. But long ago they vacated for renovators. I wouldn’t be surprised if the house is being flipped by investors.