Usually the Tacoma Photo Club meets 1x a month and has a pretty good turn out; but lately I've been wanting to get out and shoot a little more often and try new places. One of the hardest parts for me is the anxiety of walking around with a bunch of cameras and feeling out of place. It becomes a lot easier when there's a few other folks taking pictures.

The Proctor Neighborhood

Proctor is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Tacoma. When I usually visit, I just hit up the same stores or drive the same paths; this walk gave me an opportunity to walk through neighborhoods that I'd never had a reason to drive down.

PNW Architecture

My visit to Boston really contrasted a lot of the architecture of homes in Washington vs the east coast. Obviously, the east coast developed much faster, denser, and earlier than the rest of the country and the way their neighborhoods are setup highlights that. Even if you compare modern neighborhoods with older neighborhoods, you'll find that (to no surprise) developers prefer cookie cutter houses that are as close as legally possible to get their ROI.

This neighborhood in Tacoma has a lot of the craftsman style houses and cottages that are relatively conservative in size but have decent size yards.

Uniqueness in the neighborhood

I really appreciate that these houses not only come in different shapes and sizes but they also have a lot of character to. This first house has a really cool mural on the fence, the next house had some of their halloween decorations out along with their sasquatch cutout and old school bus (from a Vietnamese church?), and this last house had tons of decorations and pretty cool yard signs!

Fall colors

As much as I love the things that make this neighborhood distinct, I also really appreciated the shots that felt totally anonymous. The feeling that these houses and this street could be found in so many spaces across the country.

In 2026, I'd like to hit up a few smaller communities and try to capture something similar.