Drive thru open Olympus OM-2n 40mm f/2 Zuiko Auto-S Ilford HP5 Plus LegacyPro L110, Dilution E (1+47) 2021
South Street is the south border of Indianapolis’s historic Mile Square. You can probably guess the names of the north, east, and west border streets.
You’ll find this Subway and (behind it in the background) an Arby’s on South Street, as if they were out in the suburbs someplace. This land is becoming valuable, and I wonder how long it is before both restaurants are razed in favor of apartments or condos.
Downtown Indianapolis is again becoming a hip and happening place to be, which has led to lots of new construction. There are tons of apartments Downtown now, all in the four-over-one style with a concrete main floor and wood frame upper floors. This growth kicked into gear well before the pandemic; it’ll be interesting to see whether it resumes or not. But the buildings are here regardless. The growth was so strong for a while that it expanded into the previously unfashionable south end of Downtown.
I benefit from this, as I work nearby now. Some of the amenities, such as a CVS pharmacy, are useful to me. I popped in not long ago to buy a box of tissues for my desk.
Area sidewalks are brick, in this interesting multi-color pattern.
The Aleander is a four-star hotel. Or so I hear, since I don’t stay in hotels so close to home. I did attend an event here once, and found the space to be very nice.
One old building remains in this area: this onetime livery stable, now home to the Indianapolis branch of Taxman Brewing. The first time I visited here, most of this construction hadn’t been started yet. Taxman was far enough away from the heart of Downtown that I wondered why they located here. They clearly knew what was to come.
My new job is located Downtown in Indianapolis, but a couple blocks south of what’s considered to be Downtown’s heart. My last job was about two blocks east of Monument Circle, amid Indy’s tallest buildings. My new job is seven blocks south of Monument Circle, amid some very old houses, brand new expensive apartments, and decayed light industrial buildings.
I am in the office every Tuesday now, and sometimes on Friday as well, as I ease back into working in the office. On my first day back, I loaded some Ilford HP5 Plus into my delightful Olympus OM-2n. I hadn’t used my compact 40mm f/2. Zuiko Auto-S lens in a good long time, so I mounted it. I developed the film in LegacyPro L110, Dilution E (1+47) and scanned the negatives on my Minolta ScanDual II. I made these photos over about a three week span, on lunch hours and afternoon breaks.
In this part of Downtown, there are no parking garages. We all park on large surface lots. Fortunately, my employer picks up the tab. My previous employer did not, and it cost me $1,700 a year to park. These stairs lead to the popular LaRosa lot.
I don’t know what this lot is called but it’s immediately north of LaRosa. That this lot is empty says a lot about the state of returning to work in Downtown Indianapolis. In the background at left is the complex of buildings in which I work.
A lot of railroads used to converge in Downtown Indianapolis. The tracks were all elevated about 100 years ago; the infrastructure remains even though the railroads do not.
A large building, which I would guess was once a factory, is within line of sight of the building in which I work. Part of it is a brewery today.
Other businesses take up other parts of this building, while other parts appear to be vacant.
This is the entrance to the main building in the office complex where I work. I’m told this used to be a high school — it looks the part. The specific building in which I work is brand new and stands next door.
Our building is on Meridian Street, which is Indianapolis’s main north-south street. But because of the campuses of a couple of large employers and the location of a couple Interstate highways, this section of Meridian Street is cut off from the rest of it to the north and to the south. The buildings in the background are hotels and are brand new.
The Indianapolis Colts play at Lucas Oil Stadium, which is just a couple blocks away. It provides an interesting backdrop to these old houses.
These houses are a block to the west. These houses all seem so very old, from the late 1800s I’d guess. I wonder what kind of neighborhood this was in its time.
This grand dame is around the corner from my office. It houses some sort of business today. I’m very curious about what it looks like inside.
That’s a quick look at most of the area around my new office. I haven’t shown you the new construction yet; that’ll be in a post to come.
I had an errand to run Downtown along Massachusetts Avenue, or “Mass Ave,” as everybody here calls it. This diagonal Downtown street is loaded with hip restaurants, bars, and shops. I loaded some Ilford FP4 Plus into my Yashica-12 and brought it along. I walked up and down Mass Ave photographing storefronts.
I developed the roll in L110, Dilution B, and scanned the negatives on my Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II. These are easily the best results I’ve ever gotten from home developing and scanning. I got exposure right in the camera, developing led to negatives of good density, and repeated practice with the VueScan scanner software is starting to pay off. I’ve shot a fair amount of FP4 Plus over the years and finally it’s looking like I expect it to, compared to the results I got from the pro labs I used to send it to.
The Rathskeller is technically on Michigan Street, but its imposing entrance is fully visible to and accessible from Mass Ave. This building is also known as the Athanaeum and, as the sign over the door says, Das Deutsche Haus. Built in the late 1800s, it was originally a social club for German immigrants. Today it’s a restaurant, beer hall, and coffee shop.
The rest of these images are not as architecturally interesting. Over the last 20 years or so, entire blocks of Mass Ave have been demolished so enormous apartment and condo complexes could be built, with retail on the ground floor. Silver in the City, a kitshcy gift shop, is in one of the early-20th-century buildings that remains.
Global Gifts is a few doors down, in the same building. It’s a non-profit organization that sources its items ethically from around the world.
In the same building as the previous two businesses, Three Dog Bakery has been around for at least 15 years now. I remember when they opened — I thought this business surely couldn’t last. Home-baked dog treats? Really? They have several locations today.
I worked Downtown the first time in 1996-97, when Mass Ave was a very different place, not yet hip and cool. It was just starting to recover from a period when it was Indianapolis’s Skid Row, and many of its businesses remained from that era. I don’t know how long The Frame Shop has been here, but it strikes me as a 1990s-era Mass Ave business.
Lots and lots of bars line Mass Ave now. This one opened a couple years ago, replacing a longtime Mass Ave bar called the Old Point Tavern. It was one of the last old Mass Ave businesses to throw in the towel, and I miss the place. When I worked Downtown in the 1990s, I sat at the bar many a lunch hour in front of a bowl of chili. It was the kind of chili you might make for yourself at home. I didn’t make much money in those days, and the $3 (as I recall) bowl was a filling, delicious lunch for very little money. I miss the Old Point Tavern.
I’ve never set foot inside the Burnside Inn, despite its inviting facade. It’s been open for only a few years, replacing a hair salon that operated here for a long time.
Nine Irish Brothers is a chain restaurant that opened in this new building some years ago. In this case, nothing was torn down to build this building — it was a green space. I’m sure some other building once stood here, but it was torn down long before I ever set foot on Mass Ave. Margaret and I have stopped in here a number of times because the Guinness is fresh and good.
Finally, here’s my favorite Mass Ave bar, Liberty Street. They have the widest whiskey selection in town, and a massive mahogany bar. I’ve met my brother here for a tipple many a time. He lives just a couple blocks away, so it’s easy enough for him to get here!
I hope I’m settling into a successful groove with my home developing and scanning. It’s been frustrating to have gotten such mixed results over the year and a half I’ve been doing it.
As I researched the Michigan Road back in about 2008, I bought a number of vintage postcards of scenes from the road. They gave some good 20th-century views of the road and the places on it.
I sent those postcards to a road-loving collector not long ago; a man can keep only so much. But I scanned them all first.
The Michigan Road begins in Madison, on the Ohio River. This 1960s postcard shows Madison’s Main Street at West Street. While the Michigan Road actually begins six blocks north of this intersection, Main and West is the spiritual beginning, if you will, of the Michigan Road.
Madison is in the Ohio River valley. As you begin your Michigan Road journey north from Madison, you climb out of that valley on a winding section of the road. This is what part of it looked like in the 1940s.
North of Madison the Michigan Road splits in two. The original 1830s alignment is a narrow country road that leads directly to the small town of Napoleon. But in the early 20th century, the road was rerouted to the east through Versailles and Osgood and then back to Napoleon. This 1970s postcard shows a motel in Versailles that still operates.
The road soon reaches Greensburg. It’s clear how the road originally entered and exited this small city, but it’s anybody’s guess how it passed through its downtown. This impressive YMCA building is near where the road picks up again on the northwest edge of downtown. It still stands and is senior apartments today.
This Methodist church still stands, as well, and is around the corner from the YMCA. Its bell tower was removed somewhere along the way.
Greensburg’s Carnegie Library stands where the Michigan Road leads out of town. It was used as city hall for some years, and I gather now it is a private residence. It was a popular postcard subject.
In Shelbyville, the Michigan Road makes a right turn at Harrison Street downtown. This theater still stands on that corner, although it hasn’t been used as a theater in a long time.
The back of this postcard is a hand-typed advertisement for a film the theater was showing. Notice the 1912 postmark!
A couple blocks later the Michigan Road reaches Shelbyville’s Public Square. In those days, streetcar tracks crisscrossed the square.
Today, the a parking lot sits at the center of the Public Square.
Finally, this image in Downtown Indianapolis shows Washington Street, which carried both the Michigan Road and the National Road. The photo looks to the east, which is southbound on the Michigan Road. I’m pretty sure that the Michigan Road turned north one block east of here at Meridian Street, but when we routed the Michigan Road Historic Byway it was much more practical to let it continue west on Washington a few blocks to West Street, where the byway turns north and soon rejoins the original Michigan Road path.
I recently got decent results developing 120 Ilford FP4 Plus in LegacyPro L110, Dilution B (1+31). The more I use this Kodak HC-110 developer clone, the more I like it. Meet my colleague Ishank.
And this is Trent. We met for lunch Downtown on a warm autumn day. A particular cheeseburger joint has plenty of outdoor seating.
We met for lunch on Indianapolis’s popular Massachusetts Avenue (“Mass Ave,” we all call it). We met on the block in the photo below thinking we’d hit the fried chicken place, but we learned that during COVID they’re not serving lunch. So we walked up the street and found the cheeseburger place open.
In many shots, blacks went to 100% and there was no detail available to retrieve in Photoshop. Areas of Ishank’s hair, beard, and T-shirt came out fully black. In the photo below, note especially the side of the truck in the foreground, and the slacks of the woman in the mural.
I probably underexposed those photos. I should have metered for the shadows, especially in the photo above where the light is so mixed. Instead, I started the meter app on my iPhone, aimed it at the middle of the scene, and set the Yashica-D to whatever it said. I would do well to be more disciplined in my metering technique. Fortunately, my hasty technique worked fine in even lighting, as in the scene below.
I shot these in my Yashica-D. I use my Yashica-12 more often because of its built-in meter and easy crank winding. But the D is still a lovely camera. Its Yashikor lens, a triplet, gives a lovely swirly bokeh (see the portraits above) that the 12’s Yashinon lens, a Tessar clone, can’t match. People in the photo forums decry the Yashikor’s softness compared to the Yashinon, but I find the Yashikor to be plenty sharp.
Speaking of sharpness, I continue to learn so much from your comments. On my recent post about Kodak Panatomic-X film, Ted Marcus recommended deconvolution sharpening over unsharp masking. I searched the Internet for more info and learned that you can do it natively in Photoshop’s RAW editor. This article explains. I like the effect better than unsharp masking. The real test will come when I try it on 35mm scans.
I took the Yashica-D on a drive one chilly lunch hour and stopped in some familiar places. If I had known that fellow was going to bike into my frame, I would have waited a second or two longer so he would have appeared in a more interesting spot!
I like shooting 12-exposure rolls of film when I’m shooting aimlessly like this. One good photo walk, or two or three short photo walks, and its into the developing tank with the roll. It also reminds me of my early days making photos in my little Kodak Brownie Starmite II and later in my crappy Imperial Magimatic X50. I had no choice but 12 exposures in the Brownie on 127 film. I could buy 20- (and later 24-) exposure 126 cartridges for the Magimatic, but often bought 12-exposure cartridges because they were less expensive. I had so little money then. I hadn’t worked out yet that it was more economical per frame to buy the 20-exposure cartridges, especially when you factored in developing and printing.
