It seems like all the good buildings are somewhere else, Europe, the Far East, even the East Coast of the US has buididngs with more character than the west. So when my local camera club chose architecture as the theme for a recent month’s photo subject I thought I would have to go to the hard drive to find something to fit the theme.

If you follow this blog you might recall I’ve posted some old world images in the past couple of years, specifically, Italy and England. Back here on the west coast, buildings in San Jose, founded in the 18^th century, have some character. At one million people, it is also one of the biggest cities in the bay area, topping even San Francisco (at about 650,000). Port Townsend, Washington has some unique and old buildings I could possibly dig up out of the depths of the photo collection. But along the way I met some people who take monthly photo walks, and I decided to join them and see what I could see. I met them in downtown Riverside, California.

Riverside is home to the world-famous Mission Inn. Built in the Mission style that is popular in the southwest, it was never a mission. In fact, it has nothing to do with the Catholic Church, it’s a bit of Hollywood 60 miles east of the movie capital of the world. The little downtown has a few other buildings with character that go back about one hundred years.

I haven’t decided what to submit to my local photo club for the monthly topic, Italy and England have so much character it’s hard to replace something a mere 100 years old. But I don’t have to limit myself to the club, I can post here.

I used my trusty Mamiya 645 for these pictures. I loaded up Kodak Gold 200 and pushed it to 400. I did all developing and scanning. Pushing the film one stop I made it possible to take pictures handheld even though iso 200 is a bit slow for late evening pictures. Even though I added a manual flash unit to highlight things close to the lens and directly in front of me, the film is daylight balanced and doesn’t do too well in the evening shade and muted colors. The camera was mostly shot on aperture priority.

Here’s a few shots of buildings with character in Riverside, California.

What about you? Do you live in a place where buildings have character?