If you are looking for some good cheer in these sour times, you could do a lot worse than Justin James Reed’s recession print sale. By print sale, I mean that Justin is offering a print-quality downloadable photograph for free, just to spread some warm fuzzies. It’s a great image, too.

In a similar vein comes this post from Rachel Hulin regarding the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog at the Library of Congress. With a little searching, one can find some wonderful high-resolution images freely available for download. I happen to have a huge crush on Carleton Watkins at the moment, and sure enough, with a little bit of digging, I came upon this lovely image, which will soon have a home on my wall.

California Geysers, by Carleton Watkins

As for my part, I am offering the image below as a document of disappearing Brooklyn. These buildings have stood at the far edge of Smith Street for many years and have become so well-known that the surrounding neighborhood is now jokingly called the Notary District. Something tells me that they won’t be around much longer, although the stagnant economy seems to have given them a short reprieve. It seems like building has stopped all over the city; everywhere I look nowadays I see vacant lots where developers have started projects and given up halfway through.

This is a high-quality Tiff file that should make a very nice 8×10 print. If you do end up printing a copy for yourself, please drop a line in the comments and let me know about it.

I would also like to mention that a great friend of the Notary District, Bob Guskind, passed away last week. Bob was the publisher of the Gowanus Lounge, a well-known local blog. Bob worked tirelessly, sometimes writing dozens of posts a day, documenting Brooklyn’s incredible transformation over the last few years. Bob published many of my photographs of the neighborhood on his site over the years, including this one, and he will be missed.

Russo Notary, Brooklyn, 2008

Click to download Russo Notary, Brooklyn, 2008 (4MB Tif)