On this day, August 15th, our hero took a lot of pictures. It seems like he was newly arrived in Cleveland and at his school, and taking it in.
The first photos on this day are of a nice public square -- if I knew Cleveland I suspect I'd recognize it, but I sort of like keeping this whole thing in semi-fictive abstraction. It's paved, but has large islands of colorful flowers planted amongst the paved walkways: they pop with dark red, pink, purple, white, and green grasses. Overlooking the whole thing is a spire of what is almost certainly a landmark building, tapering to a sharp point, stone and early 20th-Century looking, with an American posted atop that is surprisingly visible (you can see some of the stripes) even at a distance. There is a wide shot of the square that captures all this, then some alternate angles that get in closer to the flower beds, revealing an arcing fountain at one end of the piazza. It's a different fountain than the previous series; we're in a new place -- this one (it's hard to tell from the pictures) seems to feature a male form leaping out of the water, or an orb, the form wrought in green metal, muscular torso and arms upstretched, lower half obscured either by swirling waters from which he's bursting or a merman-tail type situation.
What looks like a recently built residential high-rise overlooking the square gets photographic attention. Is this where our hero's rented a flat?
The next photos are of streets in Cleveland. We begin on E. 4th St, which has signs for a "CLE+ Visitors Center" and something called Corner Alley, the latter advertised on an ersatz old-fashioned neon-style sign. One side of the street is brightly lit, the other (with both the signs) is cast in deep shadow. I wonder if our hero is not perhaps experimenting with the phone's ability to shutter for different light exposures. There are cars parked on the street, which looks like the street of any well-kept district of a well-tended midsized American city. An odd piece of art/signage dominates the middle of the shot: I think it's supposed to be/evoke a giant torch, conical and metal with flames depicted on panels running up its side. It looks like the sort of thing that a city might put up to denote that you're now in the "Downtown District" or the "Wharf Markets," when a city is trying to encourage the use and reality of that kind of neighborhooding concept.
This looks like a commercial district. It looks like the sort of place business school students would come to have lunch; it reminds me of having lunches on sunny American streets in Chicago during business school.
There are 3 pictures of this commercial street, with signs and restaurants and odd art-poles on the sidewalk, then a strange final picture in this set. It's of a street that's mostly empty: just a couple of cars parked, a couple people walking in a way that just makes the absence of people more clear. All in shadow. It has a side street look; it's narrow, with the traffic lane in one direction actually too tight to even allow for parking. There's a building on it with a nice detailed grey-granite first couple of stories, followed by red brick above, with one of those thick art deco structural awnings. If you zoom in you can see the lettering: Statler Arms. Contra what I said above, I searched and found this. Our hero's residence, in his new city, to which he has come almost certainly to study and is probably studying still, living with doubtless hundreds of others in this building I'm betting near campus in a "gracious apartment home," perhaps with a view of Lake Erie. I had no idea that was possible, the Lake Erie views, even though I've seen Cleveland on the map of course. That's nice.
Next: a lot of pictures of intersections.
The first photos on this day are of a nice public square -- if I knew Cleveland I suspect I'd recognize it, but I sort of like keeping this whole thing in semi-fictive abstraction. It's paved, but has large islands of colorful flowers planted amongst the paved walkways: they pop with dark red, pink, purple, white, and green grasses. Overlooking the whole thing is a spire of what is almost certainly a landmark building, tapering to a sharp point, stone and early 20th-Century looking, with an American posted atop that is surprisingly visible (you can see some of the stripes) even at a distance. There is a wide shot of the square that captures all this, then some alternate angles that get in closer to the flower beds, revealing an arcing fountain at one end of the piazza. It's a different fountain than the previous series; we're in a new place -- this one (it's hard to tell from the pictures) seems to feature a male form leaping out of the water, or an orb, the form wrought in green metal, muscular torso and arms upstretched, lower half obscured either by swirling waters from which he's bursting or a merman-tail type situation.
What looks like a recently built residential high-rise overlooking the square gets photographic attention. Is this where our hero's rented a flat?
The next photos are of streets in Cleveland. We begin on E. 4th St, which has signs for a "CLE+ Visitors Center" and something called Corner Alley, the latter advertised on an ersatz old-fashioned neon-style sign. One side of the street is brightly lit, the other (with both the signs) is cast in deep shadow. I wonder if our hero is not perhaps experimenting with the phone's ability to shutter for different light exposures. There are cars parked on the street, which looks like the street of any well-kept district of a well-tended midsized American city. An odd piece of art/signage dominates the middle of the shot: I think it's supposed to be/evoke a giant torch, conical and metal with flames depicted on panels running up its side. It looks like the sort of thing that a city might put up to denote that you're now in the "Downtown District" or the "Wharf Markets," when a city is trying to encourage the use and reality of that kind of neighborhooding concept.
This looks like a commercial district. It looks like the sort of place business school students would come to have lunch; it reminds me of having lunches on sunny American streets in Chicago during business school.
There are 3 pictures of this commercial street, with signs and restaurants and odd art-poles on the sidewalk, then a strange final picture in this set. It's of a street that's mostly empty: just a couple of cars parked, a couple people walking in a way that just makes the absence of people more clear. All in shadow. It has a side street look; it's narrow, with the traffic lane in one direction actually too tight to even allow for parking. There's a building on it with a nice detailed grey-granite first couple of stories, followed by red brick above, with one of those thick art deco structural awnings. If you zoom in you can see the lettering: Statler Arms. Contra what I said above, I searched and found this. Our hero's residence, in his new city, to which he has come almost certainly to study and is probably studying still, living with doubtless hundreds of others in this building I'm betting near campus in a "gracious apartment home," perhaps with a view of Lake Erie. I had no idea that was possible, the Lake Erie views, even though I've seen Cleveland on the map of course. That's nice.
Next: a lot of pictures of intersections.
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