Father Pitt was trying out a very long lens after making an expedition to Pitaland. In the center of the picture is the tower of Engine House Fifty-Seven. It was about half a mile away.
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Rooftops of Brookline
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A Walk on the South Side with a Black-and-White Camera
Corner of 16th and Sarah Streets. It was not really a black-and-white camera; it was old Pa Pitt’s nineteen-year-old Samsung Digimax V4, a strange beast that was made for photography enthusiasts who wanted something that would fit in the pocket but still had most of the options of a sophisticated enthusiast’s camera. Father Pitt has set the user options to black-and-white. There is no good reason for doing so: obviously the camera collects color data and throws the colors away, and the colors could just as well be thrown away in software after returning from the expedition. But knowing that the picture must be black and white forces one to think in terms of forms rather than colors. So here are half a dozen pictures from a walk through the South Side Flats.
Building on 17th Street, probably from the 1920s. 
The entrance to St. Adalbert’s Church. 
St. Adalbert’s rectory. 
Rowhouses on Sarah Street. 
Front steps. -
Mushroom
Trying out a new camera. Actually, it’s twelve years old, but it just arrived, and twelve years old is newer than most of old Pa Pitt’s cameras.
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Cloudscape
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Rooftops of Polish Hill
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Strawberry Way
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A Medieval Fantasy
A little experiment in digital art. It began with a photograph of one of the Gothic gateposts outside the chancery behind St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland. That was made black and white, and then put through a multiple-layer “etching” filter, and then every detail that looked at all modern was scribbled over. This is the result. Was it worth the work? Probably not, but one can always learn something from these experiments.
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First Avenue Station
The distinctive undulating platform roofs of the First Avenue subway station, seen from across First Avenue.
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Tracks in the Snow
A rookie hunter might follow these tracks expecting to find a freight train; but a seasoned tracker would notice that they are Pennsylvania broad gauge, and therefore must lead to a trolley eventually.
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Witch Hazel
Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is one of old Pa Pitt’s favorite plantings. It blooms in the dead of winter; it keeps its petals closed until a warmer day comes along, and then it unfurls its little red flowers and floods its surroundings with perfume. But if you bring in a few twigs and put them in a vase, you don’t have to wait for a warm day. The flowers will unfurl within hours, and then in a day or two the perfume will start filling your house. You can have a fresh bouquet from the garden in the middle of January.
The twiggy bouquets make an interesting display, and for some reason it occurred to Father Pitt that he should attempt to photograph one in the manner of the 1930s.
