Chris Wage Photography 

Railroad tracks, North Nashville. I’ll lay off the storm pictures soon, I swear, but for now storms and cicadas is pretty much all that’s goin on around here.

A few years ago they introduced a bunch of hawks to downtown Nashville in an attempt to combat the pigeon problem. I don’t know if it worked, but it sure looked cool at times. No word on what they plan on doing about the starling problem.

An army of air conditioning units after a spring storm. North Downtown Nashville.

Overpass – Downtown Nashville, 2011.

Lightning in the Encore, 2008

An oldie but a goodie. The night this was taken, I was peering out of my window (I did this a lot when I lived downtown) at the storms blowing through. Suddenly a couple of fire engines came tearing down the streets headed for the Encore building, which was newly completed but not open yet. They flanked each side of the building and started doing their thing — including raising the ladders on each truck to the side of the building. I wasn’t sure if there was a bomb threat or a hostage situation, or a localized fire on an upper floor or what.

Naturally, I grabbed my camera. Because that’s what photographers do during tragedies, apparently: they set up a tripod and kick back. So I had my camera all setup and I was just taking longer exposures to see if I could capture anything — and it ended up being lightning reflected in the front moving in behind me. Goes to show that you never really know what you’re gonna get.

I found out later that this was actually a test drill. Any time that there’s a new high-rise building, the fire department deploys their trucks and raises the ladders to make sure they know how high the ladders will reach from various points around the building. Pretty cool.

When I’m sick, I get a bit stircrazy. So, instead of taking pictures, I re-process old ones. Here’s a reworking of a picture I like a lot. Dusk is one of my favorite times in downtown Nashville, even if the starlings roosting can turn it into a birdpoop barrage.

I’ve been forcing myself to take my LX-3 out more, and point it down instead of up. Old habits are hard to break.