We returned to downtown Miami this month with Open House MIA. We roamed around some different places this time, and the weather wasn’t as overcast, leading to some nice reflections and clean skies. A highlight was exploring the Art Deco lobby of the DuPont Building.
This photowalk was meant to explore Sunset Place, an outdoor shopping mall in South Miami that’s slated to be demolished… eventually. I have some fond memories of the place, and I’ll be sorry to see it go. It’s also the closest high-grade movie theater, so once it goes, I’ll have to do without Dolby Vision until AMC opens a new one.
I managed to roam around half of the mall around dawn, as well as some interesting spots in the surrounding neighborhood. I even got a swag-bag from a grocery store that was having its grand opening.
This month’s excursion took us to the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, with an emphasis on the murals and street-art, as well as watching the preparation for events associated with the upcoming Art Basel festival.
The October 2025 photowalk took us to downtown Miami. The theme was the mixture of old and new, seeing Miami as a city of constant reinvention. It was a blustery day, with winds whipping clouds and rain showers past every few minutes, which made for a lot of opportunities to play with light and reflection.
140 New Montgomery is an office tower in San Francisco. Some years ago, I saw a recommendation to visit its extraordinary Art Deco lobby. I finally made the time to drop by during a visit, and got some photos. I was more interested in getting reference for the style, materials, and fixtures, so I wasn’t really concentrating on composition for every individual photo.
My friend Aysha Gomez-Kureishi has recently decided begin offering her services as a harpist performing events in the San Francisco Bay Area (as events become a thing again). While I don’t have much experience working with two-legged models in photographs, we decided to see what we could come up with improvising a photo stage in her home office. Luckily, Aysha does have experience modeling, so she knew how to pose, and all I needed to worry about was lighting/staging, and camera placement. She and her husband also had several general ideas for shots and setups.
These are the photos that she chose to use on her website. She’s also posted some outtakes to her Instagram feed.
A selection of photos taken over the weekend at the Fairchild and Morikami Gardens.
