My morning walk with the Autocord (pt. 1)

 Well, the dream is over. Spring Break has come to an end. So many plans, none came to fruition, and the week snuck away like a professional thief, silently with no trace. Tomorrow I return to zooming.

Today I still had the day to prep for what was coming. I took my morning walk, but decided to take a different camera. I am really impressed with the image quality from my Minolta Autocord, and I have resolved to use it much more. I was distrustful that it had been repaired well, but my images from the weekend at the Hidden Valley Nature Reserve have convinced me otherwise. It does focus at infinity, and the images are pin-sharp. It is a pleasure to view them. The only concern that I have is that the aperture tab moves too freely. I might set it to f16 and, while moving the camera around, it moves to f5.6. So, I will just have to be extra careful.

I went out and walked. The trees along the adjoining street were being trimmed by city workers. It was about time. The branches were so overgrown that homeless people where hiding their shopping arts and leaving bicycles and trash there. I don't see them during the day, but at night they are there. I know, I know, it is the perennial story. We have to be concerned about everyone's plight, but it is dangerous there, and the homeless community seems to have grown massively in the past ten years. They have taken over wide swathes of the city, and the traditional city park is now claimed by them. There seems to be no solution.

Walking along the Railroad, I took my usual 2.5 mile route. It takes about an hour to complete it, but I would pause to take photos. Here are a few from today. They were taken on a roll of Foma 200 black and white film, with a shutter speed of 1/125, using an orange filter, with variable apertures from f11 to f22, depending on how I evaluated the scenes. If it was full sunlight, I used f22, if it was in the shade, I might use f11. 

Railroad crossing and lumberyard close to where I live (about half a mile away). The lighting was not the best, it was frontal, but by mid afternoon it would have been better. I would not have been walking at that time, however. It is best in the afternoon and early evening.

Pointing my camera in the other direction, these are the railroad tracks. The sun is to my left. 

Just a few hundred yards ahead, next to a small complex of offices are these trees with flowers in bloom. They are pink, a beautiful color that constrasts strongly with the blue of the sky. I will try to capture them again, but with slide film.

Here is a small open field next to the Santa Ana River. It has paths, I don't know who has laid them down. To the left is the river and a homeless encampment among the brambles and the trees that line the river. It is still startling to me to encounter this much open space. In my childhood, it was an open prairie that I would traverse as I walked home from school.

More of the open space.

A view from atop the bridge that traverses the river. I could hear the homeless people hidden in the bramble, and I was sure they would hurl insults at me as soon as they saw me with the camera. They are very distrustful of outsiders who see them, even though I have no intention of reporting them. This is a whole hidden village here.