I’ve wanted to try street photography for a while, but I’m still shy about getting close enough to people for my camera. Today in Portland, the 50501 Day of Action protests were quite dense and people held all sorts of witty, colorful signs throughout Monument Square, down Congress Street, and onto the steps of City Hall. Everyone knew their photo might be taken.

I took more photos than usual, around 140, and it was a new experience to quickly frame these photos in my optical viewfinder, take quick snaps, then know I’d go back home and narrow down a selection from the morass. Usually I’m more meditative.

These are also my first contributions to Wikimedia Commons. I’ve admired the Wikipedia philosophy increasingly over time and I even contribute $3 every month to the foundation. Recently I heard about volunteer days to chronicle the Los Angeles fires and I really enjoy that spirit of documentation. Though it was time-consuming, the precision part of my mind enjoyed captioning, describing, and otherwise providing detailed metadata for the images below. I think about my own encounters with these kinds of “primary sources” and wonder what purpose these might serve in the future.

For now, I’m adding these to my own website because I know how to make it swiftly appear in SEO. These are Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal images, so please use them in any way you wish.

This post will probably be temporary because it’s less relevant to this site’s purpose. But I wish to be useful today!