Isolation Photo Project, Day 36

Inspired by Ritchie Roesch's post on aspect ratios and his Agfa Optima Film simulation recipe and the 100% cloud cover over the area today (and probably tomorrow), I drove into downtown Princeton to see what had changed in the last two weeks since I had visited.

I parked on Nassau Street and walked up the steps to the publicly accessible garden, Betsey Stockton Garden, between Firestone Library and Nassau Street.

According to Princeton University:

Stockton was an enslaved person in the Maclean House home of Princeton President Ashbel Green who, upon gaining her freedom, became a missionary and then served the Princeton community as a founder of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and as a teacher and founder of the first school in Princeton for children of colour. She is commemorated in a stained-glass window in the church her former students presented.

I don’t usually shoot square images, but I experimented with various compositions while walking around the Firestone Library.

So that you know, the square images below are captured using the 1:1 ratio on my Fujifilm X-T2. My goal was to shoot using the Agfa Optima Film simulation recipe and the SOOC JPEGs for this post. However, I could not get the Agfa Optima Film simulation recipe to work under lighting conditions. I looked at the JPEG images but didn’t like the result. They didn’t feel right compared to the example images on Ritchie’s website. I scrapped all the JPEGs but kept the square format. I applied an Adobe Lightroom Preset that I created to give my photographs a cinematic look.

Stairs to Betsey Stockton Garden at Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April, 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April, 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April, 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Bicycles in a rack at Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Firestone Library, Princeton University
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April, 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Firestone Library, Nassau Street
Firestone Library, Princeton University | Monday 27 April, 2020 | Day 36 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR | f/8.0 | ISO 400
Submitted as part of the 100DaysToOffload project.

Panels for Portals

Update: I think it’s better to update this post to link to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #204 Doors/Doorways than to repost the same photos to a new post.

Some time ago, after many explorations of the Princeton University campus, I had noticed that many university buildings had doors that would appear at seemingly random and odd places. In many cases, these doors had no "step-up" and appeared to be hanging from the walls. I was always curious to know what lay behind the doors. Were they even real doors or just frames? Or perhaps they were magic portals like the ones in Harry Potter.

Yesterday when I was out walking around Princeton getting some exercise with my wife as well as practicing not going bonkers from living this abnormal life, I started photographing the doors that appeared next to the entrances of the storefronts, and my curiosity returned. I shared my thoughts about the Princeton University doors with my wife, who flattened my fantasies by suggesting that perhaps the doors were entryways for the apartment residents who lived above the storefronts.

31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 21.3 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 21.3 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 17 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 25.7 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 35.3 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 27.4 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 34.2 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 24.2 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 19.4 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 26.6 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 16 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 16 mm

Is it a facade?

Shortly after the governor of New Jersey issued his executive order for shelter-in-place and closed all the public schools, someone created a community group for my township on Facebook. There were lots of ideas about how the community could pull together to help less-privileged members of the town get computers and internet access so that the school children could attend classes from home. Some were organising to create meals for the children who were dependent on school lunches. This is all good.

But there was also much-seeming self-congratulation.

But if our community was so caring and giving then why was it so hard to find toilet paper? What were the meat and chicken shelves empty?

The people in my township who hoarded toilet paper, meat, eggs, and chicken, who emptied the CVS of every bottle of Tylenol. Is that the real community? Or is community a facade?

So here I am, a person with Type 1 diabetes, who uses alcohol prep pads to clean my glucose test sites and infusion set sites, who normally had no issues sourcing these from Amazon.com or the local CVS, panicking on Monday after seeing "sold out" on all the brands sold on Amazon. Being very concerned when we found out that the local CVS was also sold out. Relieved and then panicked because we could order them on Walmart but only one box. I normally order two. But even now I am more privileged than many who struggled to find supplies even before COVID-19.

31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 41.4 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 44.1 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 42.7 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 42.7 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm
31 March, 2020 | FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm