Old Town Alexandria

A pandemic habit carries on: Walking around the place where I live with an iPhone

Public art on the Potomac River — Old Town Alexandria, September 2022.

Two and a half years ago this week, the world shut down, and I started walking long distances to pass the time. And despite some hiccups, I’ve never really stopped.

Initially, the walks were a way to cope with the COVID lockdown as my photo business imploded. I went from being very busy — 2019, ironically, was my best year financially as a sole proprietor — to freelance writing only. I needed ways to be creative visually.

The solution: A deep outdoor exploration of historic Alexandria, Va.

My wife Jill and I had both worked in Alexandria — located just a few miles from our nation’s capital — since 2001. We moved into the community into 2018 after empty nesting, but I realized soon after starting the walks how little I knew about the town in which we lived.

The sudden grinding of the career gears had left me unmoored. I needed an outlet, so I started keeping a “Social Distancing Diary,” a collection of observations from those walks about the pandemic and life in our adopted city. To illustrate, I used my iPhone as my camera, randomly shooting the things that caught my eye.

It really is remarkable to see how much camera phones have improved; in many respects they exceed the DSLR I started my second career with a decade ago. They still have quirks and limits, and I never will give up my professional camera. But for some things they do the trick, and the phone camera forced me to focus on composition in a way I hadn’t since starting this second career.

For the diary, I took more than 2,000 images between March 2020 and August 2021. At that point, I stopped with the regular Facebook/Instagram posts, and have only done one diary entry since.

The walking, however, has continued, albeit in fits and starts. Earlier this year, miles and frequency declined as I dealt with knee and back issues and the world opened up professionally. But last month, after things slowed and Jill and I were able to take a couple of late summer breathers, I made a commitment to start the regular walks again, knee and back be damned.

Painting of young Queen Elizabeth in the window of an art store on King Street.

This month, with Apple’s release of the iPhone 14, I knew I needed to upgrade. My phone — the one that had taken a majority of those 2,000-plus images, plus countless others over two plus years — was still good. But it was time.

Before trading it in, I decided to take the old phone out for another walk, catching a beautiful sunrise and other things I saw during a long trek through Alexandria. With the new phone, I concentrated on using improved low-light features one evening. Even though we’re no longer “socially distant,” I thought this was a good way to transition to these "Visual Diary" entries.

Here are five more images from the walk. To see more, go to my Facebook album here. (You do not have to be on Facebook to see the images.)

Lights in a local restaurant.

Hood ornament at an antique car show.

Another sunrise photo on the Potomac.

Walking underneath a bridge near Potomac Yards.

Brick and graffiti at a construction site in Old Town.

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Two more things:

• Recently, I started looking through the “Social Distancing Diary” images I took from March 2020 through the summer of 2021, wondering if I should try to build a photography show or put a book together featuring the best ones. Soon, I will post another “Visual Diary” that features some of those shots with a short narrative. If you have any ideas, or think this could be a worthy project, please put them in the comments below.

• Coming next: A “Visual Diary” entry from a recent early morning jaunt into our nation’s capital.

Until then...