Train Tracks

Posted by dkrashb on May 25, 2013

My boys and Twiggy hanging out on the tracks Hipstomatic style

Chattanooga became a household name in 1941 when the Chattanooga Choo Choo song topped the record charts. The first train to be called the Chattanooga Choo Choo went from Cincinnati to Chattanooga in 1880. It strikes me as vaguely appropriate that both the Choo Choo and I came from Ohio, although I started my journey 2 hours further North.

What surprises me, however, is that the train that made Chattanooga so famous is no longer in operation. I guess it’s not too much of a surprise–after all, most passenger trains have gone by the wayside in the US. In fact, I looked into what were the options for taking a train to Portland, Oregon from Chattanooga. The closest train starts in Atlanta, goes up the East coast, across the Northern US through Chicago, up to Glacier National Park in Montana, and over to the West coast, going through Spokane, Washington and heading down to Portland via Seattle.

Looking down the tracks using HDR Pro, the brilliance of the azaleas just barely show up in the distance

Pat and I took the train from Portland to Glacier a couple years ago. It took about 14 hours. To get all the way from Atlanta to Portland takes about 8 days. As fun as traveling across the country by train sounds, 8 days of travel pretty much eats up an entire vacation.

It’s a bummer that we don’t have better public transportation here–the trains are one of the things that makes traveling around Europe so easy. But, our penchant for driving seems to have made a passenger railway unsustainable.

The azaleas up close are so bright I had to pull down the saturation to keep it from hurting my eyes (HDR Pro app)

As for the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the last train left the terminal in 1970. The Chattanooga Choo Choo ran for 90 years from 1880 to 1970. 61 years after its first run, it was made famous by a WWII era song that was so famous, even I know the song in spite of the fact that I was born 26 years after the song hit the charts. Even today, 72 years after the song made the train famous, I meet people from halfway around the world who are 20 years younger than me who have also heard the song. The song was apparently easier to sustain than the train.

In spite of the demise of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the former train station remains an attraction for visitors to the area. I’ve stopped in there once, but some day I’ll get over there with my DSLR and do a blog post on the resort and museum that’s been erected there.

Twiggy and Tisen just spotted a cat up on the walkway by the building

In the meantime, the best I have to offer are some iPhone shots of some of the vestigial tracks in the neighborhood. There are still many active tracks in the area–the trains still serve industry–but in the downtown area, the tracks are left only as reminders of the past.

Tisen and Twiggy enjoyed their walk around the tracks–especially when they discovered a cat hiding out under the shrubs. The building is an office building now–I don’t know the history of it, but I appreciated the azaleas.

One last look down the tracks in Hipstomatic’s tintype effect

Warehouse Row

Posted by dkrashb on May 24, 2013

The Warehouse Row sign makes a great subject for the tintype effect of Hipstamatic

Warehouse Row is one of those really cool concepts that, as a fan of a given city, you really want to see succeed. They took a bunch of warehouses (which apparently grew out of a military fort some time in the past) and turned them into a collection of shops and restaurants inside the original architecture.

This area was originally reinvented in the 1980’s and renovated again in 2006. I really hope it takes off, but people are fickle. People flock to anything new and cool. But, new and cool wears off quickly and it’s hard to keep reinventing oneself fast enough to keep pace if “new and cool” is all you have to offer.

A brighter, more modern look at the Public House side of Warehouse Row

There are some other things going on in the area that may help Warehouse Row gain some more momentum in lieu of another facelift. First of all, the city’s South side is starting to become a residential area. It’s re-development from a manufacturing area to a mixed-use residential area was slowed (like all development) by the economic crisis, but as we continue to recover, more and more of the neighborhood transitions to a desirable place to live. This combined with the growing number of shops and restaurants in other historical buildings just a couple of blocks from Warehouse Row should help keep a steady stream of customers in the vicinity.

Views around Warehouse Row

Restaurants like Public House bring people in the doors. It’s an extremely popular place that people have told us about on more than one occasion. When we decided to give it a try for the first time last weekend, we went early enough to check out a couple of shops as well.

The pedestrian walkway connecting two of the warehouses

The home decor shop we stopped in was extremely high end. I spotted a floor lamp I liked, but it was $850. Not what I was expecting to spend on a floor lamp. They did have some nice things, however. Although many of their items were oversized for our tiny condo. It made me wonder if perhaps the reason the shops are not crowded with patrons is because of the price range they’re targeting. That said, we didn’t make it in the doors of any other shops before getting so hungry we had to go get food. The shops were all closed by the time we left, which was only 5PM on a Saturday. I wondered a second time if the hours of the shops would be a limiting factor to their success. Of course, I have no idea how successful they are or aren’t with their current price range and hours.

The entrance to the warehouse at the Public House end

When we left, we had the dogs in the car so we took them for a little stroll before heading home. This gave me the opportunity to take some photos of the area with my iPhone. As I was shooting, it struck me that if I were looking at photos of this neighborhood, I would not guess it was in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

From the parking lot at Warehouse Row

Lessons Learned

Posted by dkrashb on May 23, 2013

Notice the bar top in this shot where the LED flash on the iPhone fired

News flash: Pat and I changed our eating routine!

Mellow Mushroom pizza had become our regular thing on Friday nights. The problem was that we could only count on the pizza being cooked properly about 50% of the time. Sometimes it was burned. Sometimes it was under cooked. Often it was cold after I stood waiting for a long time to get waited on.

The final straw was when we invited Twiggy’s dad to join us for pizza the previous Friday and when we got home with the pizza, it was still raw in the middle. I don’t mean undercooked, I mean raw.

So, we decided it was time to find a new Friday night gig. We failed miserably and ended up grabbing a really awful take-and-bake pizza from Whole Foods. We decided to try to find a Saturday gig instead (we’ve never had a Saturday gig).

Notice that while the bar top is darker and the beer taps less bright, not much else has changed

Saturday mid-afternoon, we got so hungry we decided we would have a late lunch/early dinner at our new Saturday night place. We headed out to get barbecue at the “Q with the View”–Sugar’s on Missionary Ridge. However, when we arrived, they had a tour bus out front and a line of about 20 people outside the door. We drove around for a while and, getting slightly lost, ended up at Public House in Warehouse Row–an area near the famous Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel that has been recently reinvented as a shopping/dining area in the original warehouse structures. Public House is a restaurant we’d heard good things about, so we figured, what the heck.

We ended up eating at the bar because the restaurant wasn’t serving food at the time we arrived. Thinking I needed to take some pictures for my blog, I played tourist and took out my iPhone. The first shot I took, my flash went off unexpectedly, suddenly making us the center of attention at the bar! Not exactly stealth!

By choosing the floor as the exposure setting, everything is visible (although maybe that’s not a good thing here)

Let that be the first lesson about taking pictures with an iPhone in a public place with low light. If you don’t want everyone to know you’re taking pictures, make sure you check the flash setting before you take the shot.

But, it affords an opportunity to make a few points about back-lit indoor photography with an iPhone when you don’t want to use flash. First, notice the difference between the first two photos. This first one was with flash the second without. The only thing that’s brighter is the bar top. The flash doesn’t fall far from the iPhone.

By choosing a lighted inset for the exposure setting, the people fade into silhouette and the floor disappears

Now, look at the next two photos. The first, using the Camera! app, I chose the floor behind the bar for the exposure setting, which allows us to see the floor (not very appealing). In the last photo, I chose the lighted insets under the bar for the exposure setting. It makes for more dramatic lighting and keeps everyone at the bar anonymous–not always a good thing, but works here.

Beer Over Dirt

Posted by dkrashb on May 22, 2013

My how the scene has changed

Beer Over Dirt is a funny name for a festival. If you happened to know that every spring the Wine Over Water event is held on the Walnut Street Bridge and if you happened to know that Beer Over Dirt is held in Renaissance Park on the ground, you might find it ha-ha-funny instead of strange-funny.

After all, we usually think of beer as being the humbler drink of the two. Plus, some people seem to think drinking beer is a more manly activity than drinking wine. So, if you’re going to start an annual beer tasting festival, it’s probably a good idea to give it a name that is both humorous and manly sounding so as not to alienate any possible participants.

Smells that make the dogs want to stay for the beer tasting

I was busy getting ready to leave for a conference the next day, so we didn’t get to go to the event. But, we did walk through the park while the organizers were getting set up.

It’s interesting to watch the transformation of the park as they set up for an event. Encountering the sudden invasion of the sidewalk under the ramp over the wetland by a row of plastic port-a-potties was our first tip-off that something was going down that night.

Booths begin to dot the landscape in Renaissance Park

Next, the grass circle had orange plastic fencing all the way around it. We later learned it was roped off because they set up an agility course for dogs. Had we known that sooner, I might have made time to go down to the event–I would have loved to see what Twiggy and Tisen would do in an agility course! Twiggy probably would have pounced on the tunnel and tried to eat it while Tisen tried to play tug-o-war with it. In any case, it could have been fun.

A drive-in stage appears on the sidewalk

The next clue was the appearance of canopies for vendors’ booths along the sidewalk and in the picnic area of the park. One vendor walked back and forth with a dog following faithfully at her heels with no leash. The law says dogs have to be leashed in the park, but I’ve seen dogs on leashes who were far more out of control than this dog. That dog clearly thought following his owner back and forth was the most interesting and important thing in the world–he didn’t even look at Tisen or Twiggy.

Twiggy looking her cool and regal self

Finally, the giant semi with a stage and sound system pulled up on the sidewalk removed any doubt we might have had at that point that there was going to be some kind of party along the river. For $25 you could taste beer for 4 hours, enjoy a live band, and take your dog through an agility course. It was all to raise money for a conservancy project for a local creek that feeds into the Tennessee River, but I wasn’t willing to spend $50 for us to run down for ½ an hour with the dogs.

Back home, Tisen prioritizes a scratch from Daddy over posing for Mommy

The Face of the BDC

Posted by dkrashb on May 20, 2013

It must be odd to be face-to-face with yourself

My husband is an expert in vintage guitars. He’s been buying and selling them for about 20 years or so. But he was always passionate about building replicas. While it’s really cool to play a collectible vintage instrument, they’re rare and irreplaceable. They’re also really expensive. So, if you can’t afford the real thing or don’t want to risk damaging it, you might choose a replica instead. Replicas are usually force-aged to look like they’ve been through years of use like a favorite pair of jeans.

My husband is one of those genius people who can figure out how to make or build anything. He invented a 3-dimensional routing machine about 18 years ago and had been collecting parts to build it since before we moved in together in 1997.

A big grin for my iPhone Camera! app

He would periodically pull our cars out of the garage and set up shop, turning our over-sized 2-car garage into a woodworking studio.

He built custom guitars when he got this itch. Usually he did it as a favor to a friend. But he periodically would come to me and start talking through a plan to build guitars to sell. I felt he needed to either be a vintage guitar dealer or a guitar maker, not both.

Ultimately, he agreed with me and he kept guitar building at the hobby level until one fateful day. That was the day he googled guitars shortly after we’d moved to Chattanooga, looking for potential places where he might find collectible guitars to buy.

A very special custom guitar project incorporating wood from a very special tree

He discovered there was a guitar shop in the large, mysterious building across the street from our apartment call the “BDC.” One evening, we went in the building to look for the guitar shop. What we learned was that this was a Business Development Center and the guitar “shop” was actually a guitar builder. They made original-design electric guitars.

As Pat learned more about the BDC and the support they provided to new businesses, he decided maybe it was time to make the shift from being a guitar dealer to being a guitar builder. So, he launched Coop Guitars in January of 2012.

He recently was asked to be one of the people included in a collage used for a banner advertising the BDC. He gets teased about this now. His fellow BDC residents like to tell him they just saw a group of beautiful young women standing around giggling over his picture. Or that a bunch of people were there earlier waiting for autographs. One of them told him he’s “the face of the BDC.”

An S-style body with curves to die for (photo by Pat)

He is taking it in stride. After all, it’s just a banner in the lobby of a building. I have to say he is looking mighty fine on that banner, though. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were having trouble keeping girls from lurking in the lobby hoping to run into him. That’s probably what I would do if I were single. 🙂

A collection of coop guitars (photo by Pat)

Renaissance

Posted by dkrashb on May 18, 2013

Looking down the sidewalk that runs along the long side of The Ramp

Renaissance Park is appropriately named. The riverfront on this side of the river was lined with large manufacturing facilities. I am having trouble remembering what exactly was where Renaissance is–I guess I need to stop and read the signs in the park again.

Whatever was on the 20+ acres that now make up the park, it left a mess.

Looking up at some of the brightest blooms backlit by the sun

Rather than haul the mess off and dump it somewhere where it could be someone else’s mess, the people who designed the park (which is apparently this firm, who has posted some cool aerial photos) created a way to “store” the waste that supposedly prevents toxic waste from reaching the Tennessee River. According to the signs in the park (which, yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve read), the mounds we regularly refer to as “the Sledding hill” and “the Ramp,” were created as part of the program to encapsulate and stabilize the industrial waste.

I always find myself particularly tickled when I think about the kids sledding down a hill that’s simultaneously protecting them from the pollutants it houses inside. I just hope we don’t learn sometime down the road that it’s having ill-effects on anyone. I have to imagine the ill-effects are less than if the pollutants were continuing to leach into the Tennessee River.

A mixture of bright flowers and native grasses rises up to a deep blue sky

In any case, the thought of an industrial dumping ground being turned into park that’s not only lovely, but also effective at removing pollutants from the water that flows through the property is pretty inspiring. It truly is a renaissance.

The hill we call “the Ramp” is particularly clever innovation. It’s landscaped as a cleanly angled plain running up the front, planted in grass and kept mowed short. It’s one of those things that you see for the first time and wonder what on earth it’s for. Then, you walk by when there’s an exercise class out on it and you realize someone really did have vision.

The ridge the runs up the spine of backside of The Ramp

The popularity of outdoor fitness classes in the park is amazing. There is not one thing that appears to have been purpose-built for fitness classes, yet the giant steps down to the wetland, the Sledding Hill, the Ramp, and even the concrete bases of park benches all provide great equipment for the most ambitious exercisers.

But it’s the other side of the Ramp that caught my focus on this day. Or, the other 3 sides. The Ramp is only a ramp on one end. The rest of the hill is long and rounded and covered in native flowers and grasses. Many of the plants produce bird seed, making the hill a favorite for many seed eaters like Goldfinches and House Finches. It’s also a favorite for a large collection of voles who like to torment dogs passing by.

Right now, the Ramp’s backside has burst into blooms. Looking up its slopes at the flowers backlit by the evening sun makes me think every spring is its own renaissance.

The Ramp makes for an awesome display of wildflowers

Up

Posted by dkrashb on May 17, 2013

Orange flowers viewed from below

It’s funny how looking up at something can change the way it looks. The paths of Renaissance park have many elevations. Some of them run parallel to one another in what is an accidental switch-back. The effect is that, in one direction, you look up a small slope that leads to a flat area where plantings line the sidewalk above–you’re looking up at the same flowers you look down on when on the other walkway.

Even the volcano (as some call it) or the sledding hill (as I usually call it) is elevated so that the lower sides of the slopes seem more prominent and obvious.

This effect reminds me of what happens when I think I’ve cleaned the house (yes, that is something I’ve done on occasion). I walk around looking at every surface glowing and I, in turn, glow with pride. Then, inevitably, I trip on something and end up on the floor where I am suddenly looking up at the same surfaces. They just never look clean from the other direction. The vertical surfaces I thought were spotless suddenly reveal just how dirty they are when I find myself looking up from the floor.

Evening primrose climbing up a slope

Fortunately, not too many of our guests lay on the floor.

This is not to imply that looking up the slopes revealed dirt. Rather, it just called my attention to some things I hadn’t really taken in completely before. The collection of primrose at the base of the tree basking in the sunlight seemed to be standing at attention from this angle. The bright orange flowers among the grass appeared from no where–I can’t recall having seen them before. Even the sledding hill with its abandoned cardboard sleds seemed somehow more appealing than usual–and far taller.

Inspired by the new view, I decided to get bold and attempt to shoot a sculpture I have yet to capture an image of that I like enough to share. Every time I shoot it, I think it looks really cool when I’m standing there and then deleted the image when I got home.

The sledding hill shot from below

I noticed the evening sun was creeping towards the horizon behind the sculpture. I thought I would try to get a sot of the sun sitting on top of it. This might have been a good time to use HDR with a tripod. However, I winged it.

Sometimes an image that really sucks makes for a lot of fun when playing with the possible ways to adjust it in Aperture. The curves feature is especially fun. It can turn an image into something completely different. This was my favorite image of the various takes and edits. I’m not thinking I’ll be hanging it on the wall, but I like how the completely blown out sun turned gray when I used the recovery tool, with its rays shooting over the top of the sculpture. But then again, I’m easily amused.

A sculpture I have yet to capture a decent image of, but had fun playing with this

Hope and Clover

Posted by dkrashb on May 16, 2013

Fleabane (I think) filling a small meadow

I have been taking the time to try to identify the flowers in my images. It’s a little hard to tell because the images I’m finding online do not have good size comparison.

That said, I’m fairly certain that the tiny flowers with the fringe of petals in white are fleabane. It’s a native wildflower in the aster family (which perhaps I am the last person to learn). I found its photo on the uswildflowers.com website; the image was taken in downtown Chattanooga.

Tighter view of fleabane

I was able to find many photos submitted on the website by the same photographer and even one image in a local Chattanooga newspaper. However, I was unable to locate a website. I find myself curious as to whether I have met this photographer or not. Not that I have met every photographer in Chattanooga, but I have run into quite a few now.

I digress. The final flower I identified was, I believe, the oxeye daisy. It seems quite a bit larger in the image on the website than the ones I saw in person, but I can’t find anything else that looks like it.

Oxeye Daisies?

These are not native. They were introduced and are now becoming invasive–they’re officially listed as invasive in quite a few states now, although Tennessee is yet to be one of them. Fortunately, only a few clumps of these appear in our little park.

They have been working to gradually remove the invaders and seem to only plant natives in the park, so it’s been fun to watch the transformation.

I wish there were a way to send romantic young couples seeking flowers after the invasive species. The young couple I caught picking evening primrose (see 2 posts ago) might have been put to good use neutering oxeye daisies!

Follow the curb

As Tisen and I slowly made our way past the meadow of fleabane and daisies, I stopped to catch an angle that interested me looking back at the aquarium. I didn’t quite get what I wanted, but maybe a little later in the evening when the sun is low enough to light the front of the aquarium would be better.

On our final stretch towards the more landscaped part of the park, after crossing the wetland, we paused to look up the stairs at the sledding hill. I couldn’t help but notice with surprise that the sledding hill is growing large clumps of clover all over its Eastern face. This struck me as both improbable and fascinating. After all, it’s a sledding hill. Not a northern sledding hill, but a southern one that gets slid upon, climbed up, skated down, run up, slept on, and even bicycled on every day of the year with very few exceptions. That clover had found a purchase on the side of this hill and somehow evaded cardboard sleds, trampling feet, and rolling children seemed quite an achievement for a living thing bound to the earth by its root.

Stairs lining up with the sledding hill–clover clumps just barely visible on right side

The clover made me feel surprisingly hopeful.

Footprints

Posted by dkrashb on May 15, 2013

A wide view of the Evening Primrose in a meadow

I was walking in the park about a week ago. It was probably a weekend day fairly early in the morning. As Tisen and I emerged from the building, we spotted a young couple in the shadows of the hillside in the early light. I suspect they had been out all night behaving romantically. At the moment I saw them, they were gathering a bouquet of flowers from the hillside. Flowers that had magically appeared almost overnight after holding out through one cold snap after another.

A clump of evening primrose

I felt bad for those flowers–to be heartlessly neutered after having waited so long for the chance to procreate. It struck me as ironic that the young couple who were clearly caught in the throes of hormonal influences would be the ones to remove the sexual organs of the plants carrying on their own romance on the hillside.

Part of me was tempted to ask the couple how they would feel if they were quietly carrying on wooing one another and some giant came along and plucked their genitalia, but I thought better of it. It’s hard not to come across as insane and potentially dangerous when you start using words like “plucked” and “genitalia” in the same sentence.

A couple of blooms filling their cups with light

I glanced at the sign that read, “Flowers are here for everyone to enjoy. Take nothing but photographs; leave nothing but footprints” posted about 20 feet from where they were gathering their bounty. I considered lecturing them on the inconsiderateness of taking flowers, not only taking from this season, but also stopping the offspring for future seasons to come. Once again, I decided to hold my tongue. Perhaps the act of thinking about saying something but not caused me to stare at them in some way that made them uncomfortable. Whatever the cause, they made their way off the hillside and stopped their pillaging.

Not quite macro with my 24-70mm lens

Having witnessed this act, I was doubly happy to notice the sea of flowers taking over the hillside this week. The evening primrose, a lovely native, seems to have found its way into every space between the other grasses and flowers growing in the park. They seem to have reached some sort of equilibrium that allows space for a wide variety of flowers at the same time.

The last, but maybe the best

The evening primrose was looking particularly sparkly about 2 hours before sunset the other day. Like the blades of grass in yesterday’s post, I had a hard time not shooting it and an even harder time reducing my rather redundant set of photos to just 1. I guess this was my way of gathering my own bouquet.

Bridges and Blades

Posted by dkrashb on May 14, 2013

Market St Bridge with grass foreground in Renaissance Park

The weather seems to be as confused as ever, but at least we had fabulous weather today–the kind of weather that reminded me of a late September day in Columbus. The kind of day where, after months of heat and humidity, you take a deep breath and think, “Ahh.” Interestingly, it just isn’t quite as refreshing when everyone is waiting for spring and it’s acting more like fall.

A pair of budding something shooting above the juvenile grasses

At least the flowers had finally reached the same point they were at by the end of March last year. I figured it was a good time to get out with the camera. Since I was walking Tisen, I opted to just take my favorite walking-around-lens, the 24-70mm. It’s a nice range for shooting both landscape and getting pretty tight when close to the subject. It does not, however, do well at macro. That I will have to save for another day.

Closer to out-of-the-camera than the earlier image. I really like the tree on the right

It gets a little old shooting landscape in the same 100 yards or so along the riverfront. While I’m sure there are an infinite number of angles to take, at some point, I just get bored.

Glowing blades of gras

I decided to try for some new angle on the Market St bridge. It was about then that I discovered a bunch of grass that had been allowed to grow to it’s maximum height and was in the middle of going to seed. I thought maybe it would make an interesting foreground for the bridge. It wasn’t quite as interesting as I hoped, but making some extreme adjustments in Aperture helped at a little pop, at least.

I had a hard time choosing between the grass images–I might like this one best

Tisen had other subjects in mind. He quickly pulled me across the walkway towards some fresh green grasses that, for a long time, I thought was bamboo. I’ve been told by someone who is much better with plants than I am that they aren’t bamboo at all but are a native grass in Tennessee. I will take their word for it.

More of the Market St Bridge

On this particular day, the sun was hitting them at a really interesting angle that made them turn into glowing blades of green. They were being backlit by an early evening sun. I couldn’t help but take about 100 images of these glowing blades. While I did crank up the volume slightly in Aperture on the contrast between the background and the blades of grass, they really looked pretty much like this in person.

One last look at the grass

Tisen was not, it turned out, impressed by the blades of grass for their aesthetic appeal. He sees them as a superior communication medium. He can mark along the clumps of grass and get both height an breadth that cannot be achieved with tree trunks or other grasses. A little secret–I couldn’t get Tisen to hold still so I could get a shot of him carrying Jack. So, I snuck a shot when he stopped to mark and just cut the back end out of the frame. I guess it’s still pretty obvious what he’s doing.

Can you tell why Tisen is holding still in the this photo?

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