Portland

Not the one in Oregon. Not the one in Maine. The one in Michigan a bit east of Lansing. I spend some time photographing there this weekend.

Portland is in part a town in its own right, but like many such towns near large cities it’s also a bedroom community of Lansing and East Lansing. There is little housing available for rent or purchase, but local businesses struggle because of the bigger stores in nearby Lansing. So you can see signs of economic strain and persistence in the town’s business district.

Here a few of my favorite images. The first is reflections in a window of the opposite side of the street. The compressed tones and yellow-orange hue give it an abstract feel. The second and third images show off the lovely architecture of the town’s heyday in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, its disheveled present, and the hope of renovations.

The Grand River runs through Portland, including behind the main drag downtown. From the park on the other side of the river you get a nice view of the backside of the old buildings.

And finally, the cover image of the blog post, one of my favorites from the day.

Cheers!