8 Shots from 8 Circles and Squares

Pursuing this project meant a search for the interesting. And the interesting almost always means people. Interesting includes the unusual, the humorous, the dramatic. At the places and times I shot, drama was rare; humor much more common. Beyond interesting, this project turned out to be very much street portraiture.
As the project progressed, I became much less reticent and much more adept at approaching people and engaging them as subjects. Of my final eight subjects there are only two that I had not engaged in conversation - the umbrella lady and the wrong way jogger. They and the "MBA for Dummies" are included because of their humor value. The other five shots I consider portraits even if the subject is not facing the camera. Based on my brief encounters, I believe something of the personality of each comes through.
This project reminded me how much I love living in Washington and exploring Washington neighborhoods. Most of the areas where I shot are experiencing gentrification; in some cases, like Capitol Hill, gentrification is virtually total. Even in Petworth, there are signs of incipient gentrification, though very small. And it was a shock to see how little the two parks I visited in that neighborhood, Grant Circle and Sherman Circle, were used. I think it's worth a return visit later in the summer.
I also intend to revisit Lafayette Square and Dupont Circle. My visits were too early in the day, on days too cold, for many people to have gathered. I'd like to develop a nice portfolio of 15 to 20 pictures for each of my circles and squares.

Lincoln Square

I visited Lincoln Square, a large park not quite a mile due east of the capitol, on a Thursday around lunchtime. I immediately encountered two young architects from Portugal who are "building a sentence," one word in each of a dozen cities, as they make their way across the US to a conference in New Mexico. Washington was their second stop. They planned to "plant" the word "expectation" in Lincoln Square. When I met them, they were cutting out letters from pieces of newspaper to use as a stencil. They planned to lay the paper on the ground and sow grass seed or flower seed in the cutout areas so that the word would grow over the next few weeks. They told me they had planted the word "absence" during their first stop, in New York. These were not necessarily the first two words in the sentence, however. The sentence will become clearer as they travel across the country. The first photo shows them checking their stencils. This is a link to their website that gives details about their project: http://www.planob.com/eng/planob.html

I had to cut short my first visit to Lincoln Square, so I returned on Saturday. I was amazed at how many dog owners and dogs were playing in the park. Unfortunately, this does not bode well for the architects' "expectation." There were several dogs running and rolling and scratching right where they had planted their seed. There seemed to be two major groups in the park, the dog people and parents with their children, either using the playground or riding bikes. The second photo shows an overview of the crowd at the park.

Aside from the dog folks and the kid folks, there were very few others in the park. The third photo portrays a very quiet young person who sat alone the entire time I was in the square.