So far, we’ve had a rather spring-like spring here in Philadelphia. In recent years, it’s felt as if we’ve gone quickly from winter to summer temperatures skipping over pleasant days in the 50s and 60s. Although we have had a few warm days, most of the spring has been pretty nice.
Holly and I went out a couple weeks ago for a long walk. I had brought along 2 cameras. I had black and white film (Lomography Berlin) already loaded in my Canon AE-1. Since I had already taken quite a few spring photos in color, I thought it might be interesting to take some in black and white. In case I changed my mind or in case I finished the roll, I also brought along my Olympus TG-5.
As it turned out, I was glad I did. It was such a bright and sunny day and many trees and flowers were in bloom so I switched to the Olympus TG-5 after only a handful of photos with the AE-1 (which I still haven’t gotten developed yet).
We decided to take a walk to Lemon Hill which is part of Fairmount Park and close to the Schuylkill River where we often walk. It’s a bit far from our apartment (about 2.3 miles) so it’s a bit of a commitment. But it was such a nice day that we welcomed the long walk.
We had been to Lemon Hill only once before, the spring after we moved here nearly a decade ago.
True to its name, Lemon Hill is a hill. It provides great views of the city skyline, the Schuylkill River, Boathouse Row and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It also gives us city folks an opportunity to take a bit of a nature hike.
There wasn’t quite as much spring color on Lemon Hill as on our first trip, but it was still really nice.
The walk to and from Lemon Hill provided some better spring color.
Part of our walk took us past the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Perelman Building in the gallery above is an annex of the museum.
The grounds along Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the museum feature numerous statues and sculptures. We passed by Symbiosis by Roxy Paine and Iroquois by Mark di Suvero.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but during the pandemic, we haven’t wandered far from our apartment. We don’t have a car, are currently leery of public transportation, and are fortunate to be working from home. We have basically been restricted to areas within walking distance. The upside to that is we have explored parts of the nearby city that we had previously missed.
On our way back home, we found that the Park Towne Place apartments has quite a few sculptures on its grounds. Unfortunately, I was unable to find out the names of most of the pieces or the artists. I was only able to identify Midsummer Night’s Dream and Water Music by Won Choi.
We had walked by those apartments plenty of times and had seen one of the sculptures from a distance but had no idea there were more.
Here are a few photos from that first, somewhat more colorful, walk from 2012 taken with my old Canon EOS Rebel T3.
Leave a Reply