Tag: Flickr

Photo by Joe Wilcox
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Flickr a Day 231: ‘The Courage Wall’

First looking at the photostream of Dan Reed, I puzzled over the perspective and subjects, which are unlike anything else yet featured in this series. He shoots streets, buildings, and such from vantage points that are atypical. Then I read his bio. He’s an architect and city planner. Dan looks at things with a dramatically different eye than I would; he sees things in another context that is refreshing and revealing.

Dan shares his insights at blog “Just Up the Pike“, which refers to Maryland Route 29, or Columbia Pike. Our daughter was born when we lived off 29, just outside Silver Spring, which is Dan’s hometown. 

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Photo by Joe Wilcox
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Flickr a Day 226: ‘White Flint Mall’

My daughter grew up going to the enclosed shopping center in Kensington, Md, where we lived for nearly a decade. There once was a kid’s play place on the third floor that was affordable and fun. Gone. We bought manga books, calendars, and tasty treats from the Borders. Gone. Molly trick-or-treated store to store on Halloween. No more, kiddies. My wife and I bought our wedding rings in a jewelry store that also is gone. The 850,000 square-foot upscale consumer cathedral closed earlier this year. Demolition is underway, and a court case brought by Lord & Taylor against the center’s management went before a jury earlier this week. Our memories, and those of others, are all that remain.

I chose self-titled “White Flint Mall”, which Mike Kalasnik shot on June 30, 2012, for its timeliness to current events. He used iPhone 4s, and for the first time in this series I slightly cropped a photo (to remove yellow road lines). Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 64, 1/2404 sec, 4.3mm. Mike, who joined Flickr in July 2007, runs the “Dead and Dying Retail” website, which offers startling look at urban decay. 

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Photo by Joe Wilcox
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Flickr a Day 224: ‘Piercing’

Our selection is so odd, or my ability to process the elements so lame, only the photographer’s explanation can make sense of it. “I went to the Institute for Contemporary Art today”, Nicholas “Nic” McPhee says of self-titled “Piercing”, captured on June 30, 2105. “As we passed through the Boston Financial District on our way there, we stumbled across ‘As if it were already there‘ by Janet Echeman. This is a big, glorious public art sculpture installation in the sky above a park—the Rose Kennedy Greenway”.

The suspended structure went up in May and goes down in October. So don’t delay getting to Bean Town if you want to see it. “This is actually a brightly colored—if the light catches it correctly—net/mesh of high strength fibers and LEDs that actually lights up in quite brilliant color at night”, Nic says. “I highly recommend the wonderful pictures on her website, which include some cool night shots”. 

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Photo by Joe Wilcox
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Flickr a Day 220: Chat

For some people, photography is a way of life. For shooter Erik Hagström, it is a way of living—of expressing himself in ways his body otherwise limits. There is a cool, somber ambiance to his art I could see, before learning his story, that captures more than just images in around the French Alps, but essence.

About himself, Erik explains: “After two cerebral accidents vascular in 2007, making me lose most of the control of my members, reconquered gradually, not being able more to play of musical instruments, or use pencils to draw and paint, I turned to the photograph”.

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