Adventuring Detroit with my Sony Mirrorless Camera!

A little backstory as to why Tim and I ended up in Detroit this past weekend!

We love Radiohead, and when they announced their tour, we made sure we were at home near our computers ready to get tickets to the Boston show. If you don’t know about getting tickets for a highly coveted band, you don’t know about Bots. They are computers that buy up all of the tickets and then put them on third-party ticket sales sites for much, much more than their face value. Real cool. So after not having luck with Boston we tried NYC, no luck and ended up having luck with Detroit tickets. We joked that of course there were still tickets for Detroit, because who goes to Detroit?

Well, now we do! Fast forward to now. We’re so glad that things worked out this way. I was able to book a wedding the day of the Boston show we were looking to get tickets for, and now we can say we loved the time we spent in Detroit and would recommend it as such an awesome up and coming city! They’ve been through a ton of shit and deserve the best. We met and chatted with so many kind and friendly people who wanted to tell the stories of the city. We asked for recommendations from everyone we talked to, to make sure we were finding all of the places someone must see when visiting!

I feel our trip was a bit focused on a few things, food, photo adventures, places locals go and cool shops! From everything I found and what was recommended to us were able to see a city on the rise and are excited to share that with whoever wants a great place to visit. Side note; the Radiohead concert was amazing and the venue was also amazing!

Sure, most of the photos I took are abandoned buildings, nature pushing through the decay and small details from beautiful murals that are painted throughout the city, so you’ll have to take our word for it. Check the bottom of the post for links to everywhere we went! 🙂

When we first arrived we went straight to our Airbnb. I link to it after the images! It was beautifully decorated and the perfect size for two people. Not pictured is a full kitchen area where we were able to make cocktails before going out and a hot breakfast both mornings.

After going to Green Dot Stables and Hopcat for dinner and a drink we waited to take the Q-Line home, and I took this photo while we waited. The bright white is the Q-train’s lights!

Below are photos of a building we found after we finished at the Eastern Market. We wanted a little bit of ruin exploration, and this was perfect. The first few photos are to give you an idea of the space we explored and then I started having a lot of fun with texture, shapes, and color. My favorite type of personal photography. It brings me back to color theory and design roots.

Below is a photo I took of Tim taking the pulley photo to the right! I had to pair his picture with mine! 🙂 How fun! Did I mention I’ve been teaching him to use my old camera? I haven’t been doing much teaching out on location mostly just critiquing at home. He’s got a handle on shooting in Manual, which is incredible! 🙂
Now to some of my favs!
And another spacial shot and a chair portrait for funsies!

Probably the prettiest collage I ever made thanks to all of the mural artists in Detroit! :

Here are a few that you can see what the murals actually were of! There were SO many more. These are just a few.
Oh, and I had to pose by the one with the pineapple! <3 Thanks, Tim for using my camera and getting that shot for me. 🙂
A view of the streets where these photos were taken!
We wandered around and found this building (Lee Plaza) and needed to stop. Story/details in the links below.

On our way to our next stop, I felt I needed to document this house. I focused a bit on nature taking over, over the years in a lot of the photos I took, not just at the Heidelberg Project in the photos to come.  Some of the streets we drove down, and buildings we saw would be perfect scenes for a zombie movie. Busted out windows, trees growing out of the houses, barely visible houses behind the thick greenery. I had to remind myself that this is real life, and there’s a lot of history on the streets we drove down. On some of the blocks there’s one lonely house and just empty lots where houses once stood, and nature took over. I thought showing these types of photos was important because it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen in person. And I felt this side of Detroit needed to be captured, as I think the Detroit area is back on the rise and hopefully it won’t look like this forever.
One of our last adventures of the weekend consisted of the Heidelberg Project. When entering the street, we were greeted by hearts on trees and telephone poles. It was lovely. So, there’s a lot of information online about the project but basically, the artist started collecting items from the neighborhood and putting them on the houses and creating sculptures with them. He also created clocks and put them up all over the neighborhood. We think it was a commentary on the fact you can have all of these things but things can come and go, and when these things are gone, what you have left is time. An interesting concept and a way to bring people to the city. From a pamphlet I read, this is the third most visited art destination in Detroit, including museums! We had quite the photo adventure here.
Next collage is another artist who has art on the street. I loved the bumper sticker saying. I think it’s important that we lift up this city that needs it right now.
A random arm having a smoke with their handbag in tow.
Ending it off with another one of me by some fun wall art, thanks for taking this photo, Tim!

Where we stayed:

  • https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5811207 – Our Airbnb – A fellow photographer! – The location was great! Safe area in the Wayne University area and the building shares a parking lot with the Police. Right on the main street, the street in which the arena was on. We took the brand new Q-Line train down to the arena for $1.50 a person ($1.50 fare is good for 3 hours, or a day pass is $3.00).


Shops we visited
:

The things we saw:

The food we ate:

  •  https://www.greendotstables.com/detroit-1 Had dinner here Saturday night. Tapas style sliders, salads, soups and sides where everything including most of the drinks were either $2-$3! I liked the catfish slider and the wedge salad. Also, I loved the strawberry gin drink and the Epic – Sour IPA ($5 though) Tim had a coney which is just a chili dog, amongst basically all of the other sliders, haha. And basically all of the amazing cocktails on the list.

  • https://hopcat.com/detroit – Heard this place had 130 taps, so we came here after Green Dot and had a beer!

  •  https://slowsbarbq.com/ – Had a late lunch here Sunday before the Radiohead show. I got “The reason: Smoked pork, pulled and bathed in our North Carolina style sauce, topped with coleslaw and dill pickles.” and Tim got “The Yardbird – Smoked Amish chicken, sautéed mushrooms, cheddar and applewood smoked bacon in our whole grain honey mustard BBQ sauce ~ aka Yardbird Sauce.”

  •  http://brewery.jollypumpkin.com/ Split a margarita pizza for lunch on Monday and had a flight of sour beers. The most sour beers I’ve ever seen offered from a single brewery. The dude I sat next to at Radiohead suggested it after I told them my love of sour beers.

     

The coffee we drank:

July 24, 2018

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