Olympia is fun to walk and check for new stores, signs, and graffiti. Fourth and Fifth Avenues are rich with material, if you like grunge and messy American city vibe.
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| Thurston County Food Bank (Oct. 2, 2025, Ektar 100 film, 90mm ƒ/2.5 Elmarit lens) |
Some mornings, I eat breakfast at Bread Peddler on Capitol Way N. and then walk home along 4th or 5th Avenues.
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| Parking lot, Capitol Way at State Ave. |
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| Parking lot, Capitol Way (Feb. 28, 2026, 50mm F/2 Summicron lens) |
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| Thai restaurant, not open yet? |
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| Voyeurs, 404 4th Ave. E. (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens) |
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| Vintage clothing, 707 4th Ave. E (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens) |
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| Espresso Station, corner of 4th Avenue and Plum Street |
More random scenes around town.
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| The Flamingo House! 503 Central Street. |
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| Surviving wood traditional houses, view south from Legion Way |
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| Alley, Legion Way 314 (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens) |
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| Pink restaurant at 430 Legion Way |
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| Gas meters, Olympia Ave, (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens) |
I took this photograph with my 1962 Soviet-era ЮПИТЕР-8 lens. It has field curvature and is therefore is more suited to scenes with depth. But I continue to be impressed with how well this Sonnar design works in mid-distance scenes. It is a thread-mount lens, but with a Leica M-LTM adapter, it mounts perfectly on my Zeiss Ikon ZM camera.
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| Massage shop, Fir Street |
A friend told me that this little building might be a Sears kit home. It definitely resembles some of the Sears houses with the raised attic room on one end. But I checked with
SearsHouses.com national database, and one of the curators wrote that Sears did not sell houses this far west. However, there were west coast kit house manufacturers, so who can tell about the origins of this modest little house on Fir Street.
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| Smoke shop, Old Pacific Highway |
This ends our winter 2025-2026 random exploring around Olympia.
I took most of these photographs on Kodak Ektar 100 film using my Zeiss Ikon ZM camera with various lenses. The ZM has a remarkably accurate aperture priority automatic exposure function, especially when the light is soft. Point, focus, click. I will write more about the ZM in the future.
