- How's it going, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the IGDC Podcast, where we talk to creatives, photographers, and artists around DC. This week, we have an incredible guest. Well, I'm just gonna introduce him, right off the bat. Austin Graff, incredible local photographer, man around town, father, husband, writer, everything under the sun, there's nothing you can't describe him with. I'm your host, Andy Feliciotti. You can find me on Instagram, @someguy, and I'm here with Holly Garner. - Hi. - Who you can find on Instagram under @golightly, and Austin, how can we find you on Instagram? - Hi, everyone, I'm pumped to be here, and you can find me @austink, which is my middle initial, obviously, Graff, @austinkgraff. - Okay. - G-R-A-F-F. - Yeah, G-R-A-F-F, not to be confused with grass. A lot of people think it's Grass, but it's Graff. F as in Frank. - We'll also include a link to his username, and also, hopefully, you already follow him, so. - Of course we already follow him. - Yeah, and if you follow Austin, you know he's always around town, seeing everything and posting all in his stories. I just gotta ask, how do you get around town? I mean, you're everywhere. I don't even know how you have this much energy. - Good question. I do have a lot of energy, which I'm grateful for, but I love exploring the town, and I actually like to do public transit. So even though I could use Lyft or Uber, I try to bike everywhere, even when it's snowing. I grew up in Russia my whole life, so even when it snows, it's no big deal. My winter coat is a very light jacket. So even in the dead of winter, I try to bike everywhere, and DC's actually a pretty small city. Like, my first year living in DC, I just metro'd, and I thought it was a huge city, and then when I stopped metroing and decided to bike everywhere, I'm like, oh, wait, you can go from Chinatown to Mount Vernon Square in like two minutes, whereas on the metro, I thought it was miles away. So I always try to bike, I try to run, and I actually like the metro despite its problems. I really do enjoy the metro, I'm grateful for it, and the bus, and what helps actually is my family is into the Fitbit challenge, and so every week, we try to compete against each other, and we're very competitive, and I have to win. And not just by a few thousand steps. I wanna slaughter them. And so, that is actually an inspiration to explore. It's like, you can't compete, 'cause I live in DC, and I'm gonna get at least 25,000 steps a day so that I can win, and that's my strategy. - What's the most amount of steps you've gotten in a week? - In a week, good question. My daily record has been 78,000 steps. - In one day? - Yeah, but actually, not in DC. That was when I was exploring Seattle, and playing with my nephews, who wanted to go on like, five bike rides, and I got up at four in the morning to go on a three-hour run. - Three-hour run? - So I wouldn't recommend it, but that's my record. Mmhmm, yep. - Oh, my God. - Yep, it was a slow run 'cause it was raining, and it was in the forest in Seattle, which I'm terrified of wildlife, and I was convinced a bear was gonna kill me. But I survived, and here we are today. - Like we said, he has lots of energy. I do, I do. - I assume you were well-caffeinated that day. - Yes, I was, and actually, there's a lot of good members of the IDGC community that are on Fitbit as well, like DCCityGirl is big into it and a few others. - Thanks, Mister, for meowing there. - We're literally doing this in Andy's kitchen, which is amazing, and he has two amazing cats. - And luckily, Megan's hiding them. But that's really just insane. Yeah, I think the most steps I've done is like 30,000. - That's good, 30,000. Apparently, I recently read a Washington Post article, where I work, about how the average they calculated may not be correct, but at least as it stands, the average American gets 5,000 steps. The average active American gets 10,000 a day. So 30,000 is good. - That's one day of my life. - That's not every day? Come on, Andy. - He's still recovering. - Come on. - So, we have to ask everybody. What year did you join Instagram, and why? - Good question. So I joined, so I've never been an early adopter of things. So Instagram started in 2010, was it? - [Holly] Yeah, October. - October, okay, and I the I started late of 2011 after one of my friends was on Instagram, and she was one of the first users, and she would post photos, and one day I went to her and I'm like, have you heard of Instagram? She's like, yes, like I've posted a daily photo for a year. And at the time, I really wanted to get into photography, had always been interested in it, and I had kind of a weird style then, where I really liked taking photos crooked. So every time I went on a trip, especially internationally with friends, I would travel with these two photographers, and they would take amazing photos, and then I would post my photos on Facebook at the time, and then later Instagram, and they all were slightly crooked, which I thought was a cool artistic style. But they would always make fun of me. I never understood why. And now that I know a little bit better, it's like, oh, that's breaking all the rules, but if you go to some of my earlier posts, you'll see some crooked photos, which I haven't, now that I am more into Instagram, I haven't gone to delete my original posts so you can see my very first post, which is like, not good at all, but it's still there. - Same, I have not deleted much on my feed. - Yeah, I think it's good to keep the old ones. - Yeah, I agree. I truly think social media, including Instagram, is about authenticity and connecting with people, and if that's who you were then, crooked photos and all, that's who you are, that's your authentic self. So I will hopefully never delete those, unless people make fun of 'em. - [Andy] And you mostly use your phone. You've never used a camera ever. - No, no, never. Actually this year, my wife was like. - [Andy] Wow, that's insane. - I have a list of things I wanna do before, which, I intentionally left out before I die, 'cause it's like, before whenever. It could be before I'm 80 or, hopefully I don't live that long, or like before I'm 50 or something like that. And one is, and I created it when I was like seven, and the first thing is buy a professional camera, which is interesting, and I haven't done that yet, and this year, my wife is actually, she asked if I would want to get one, so I'm exploring, and I've asked a few people for recommendations, including people of IGDC. - Well, we have an article that might be of help for you. - That's right. I think actually someone said. - What's that link? - Oh, yeah, we have a list of great cameras for Instagram. - We'll have to link that. - Drop the link here. - Yeah, I'll drop the link. - All right, awesome. - Speaking of the website, Austin also wrote a DC coffee guide for Instagrammers. Yeah, I don't even know how you went to all these places, but he's pretty much visited every coffee shop in DC and taken photos and reviewed the coffee, and I mean, how many cups of coffee are you having a day at this point? - Oh, so many. This is like, my fifth, which I did not start drinking coffee until like, three years ago, and now I can't stop. - It's really ramping up on you. - I know, it's crazy, and it's bad, 'cause I can't drink coffee unless there's sugar and cream in it. - Oh. - So it's like, really bad for me. - [Andy] You ever get espresso? - I did once, but it made me kind of freak out, and so I'm banned from ever having espresso. I didn't have like, a nervous breakdown, but I definitely got more paranoid, and I've never been like that before. - [Holly] This is like Austin on Red Bull. You ever had a Red Bull? - Yes, yes, actually, yes, Red Bull, and my drink of choice in college was a Jagerbomb. - Oh, yes. - Which includes Red Bull, and I actually still like those. - This oddly explains a lot. - So after we podcast, we'll go to H Street and get a Jagerbomb. - H Street is definitely a good place for that. - Yes, that is true. - It's where you go for a Jagerbomb. - That's so true. - This is awesome. So, because you don't have a camera, you have your phone always. The camera you have is the best camera you can have, right? - Yeah. - It's like, the one that's on you. You explore your city and your world so thoroughly. How did you or why did you decide to bring photography into it? Why did you decide to just start taking photos of everything sharing it with everybody? - Yes, I initially started 'cause I just wanted to learn photography, and since I had my phone, and now phones have cameras in them, and they're actually decent cameras, at least on the iPhone. I used that to kind of teach myself and learn from others, and that's why I like Instagram, is I can learn from other people. Someone recently on Instagram edited a whole bunch of photos and put that on YouTube and put it in his Instagram story, and that was interesting, and so I've learned a lot from just watching other people, you both included, and then having my phone in my pocket, I can just get it out and start to experiment. So I started it that way, and then it also started through a test where I realized that I was on my phone a lot, even when I was walking, and I'm so clumsy, and I've been hit by several cars in my life, nothing serious, but it scares me friends, and watching other people do this now, now that I'm trying not to do that as much, like, it's no wonder there's more accidents. People will just go into the street on their phone, and I used to do that, and I would miss all the details and would miss some amazing things about my city. So it started out as a test of like, okay, one, I can put my phone away, which is kind of ironic, 'cause then to take photos, I take out my phone, but I try to keep my phone in my pocket and just observe and watch, and then I notice different speakeasies or different corners, and then to remember it, I try to take a photo of it. So I think Instagram and photography has forced me to see DC in a new light, like every day, as cheesy as that sounds, but it is very true. - [Andy] I totally agree. - It makes me fall in love with the city, every single day, and I've been here for 12 years, and I'm not bored yet living in DC. - It's true, that's how I got into Instagram. It made me have a new love for the city, because you're looking at things differently, because you're trying to figure out how to present it on your feed, or like, when I first started, my feed was awful, but it just motivated and inspired me to get out and revisit all those places that I had seen you know, with family in town, you go to all the tourist things, but then you don't do 'em on your own. So it kind of got me back out in doing that stuff. - That's awesome. - Yeah. I mean, so do you normally edit your photos? - I do, yeah. So I edit it within the Instagram app, usually. - [Andy] Oh, wow. The tools have gotten really good in there. - Yeah, the tools are great, and at first, I couldn't do that, and at that stage of my life, I also didn't care, and I was so new, again, taking crooked photos, that I would just post whatever, and they're awful. But now, I'm grateful that now that I'm more interested in it, Instagram has upped their game in terms of editing as well, so I'll just edit it in the app. I do have Photoshop on my computer for work, 'cause I need that for work, and so I have yet to post an edited photo from there on Instagram. So what I post to Instagram is just edited within-app, and also, for me, with my job, I can't do sponsored posts, things like that, but I also enjoy that, where I will turn down requests for sponsored posts, and part of that is also just for me, it's a hobby, and I always want to keep it as a hobby, and that forces me to kind of post whatever I want, versus being obsessed with, oh, is someone gonna like this, 'cause sometimes I'll post something, and I like it, and people are like, oh, I don't really care, especially about the neighborhood I live in I think is cool, but there's yet to have some cool things happen to the neighborhood, so if I post a photo o from there, some pretty are like, oh, what? They just don't like it. - This isn't DC. - Yeah, so it's nice that it's a hobby, where I'm like, oh, I don't care, 'cause I wanna post about my neighborhood. - Yeah. The photo walk down in that area was really interesting. I've never really been there. - Yeah, no, it was fun. Yeah, recently we did a photo walk there,. - We're talking about southeast DC. - Yes, yes, southeast DC, yeah, southeast, down there, east of the river, southeast DC and Anacostia, which I live close to. - [Andy] And they're getting their first Starbucks too. - Yes, we are, we are, and actually, I just found out, so we're getting our first standalone Starbucks, which, for that neighborhood, is a big deal. I moved from Capitol Hill, and if I found out that we were getting a Starbucks, I'd be like, oh, definitely won't go there, 'cause there's all these other great coffee shops there, but for that neighborhood, it's huge, and that's actually gonna be a training Starbucks for the area, so move baristas will start out there, which also means the Starbucks is cheaper. - [Andy] How do you know this? - So, incentive to go to Anacostia. So, I'm such a nerd. I love my neighborhood. I'm a paying member of our neighborhood association, and I go to their meetings. - [Andy] Oh, wow. - And so at these meetings, I learn so many things about our neighborhood. It's a lot of fun. - But I think that what we've learned about you over the years of getting to know you and being friends with you is that you have a deep desire to explore everything about your surroundings. You're an elite Yelpist, is that right? - I am, yep, Yelp Elite, holla. - You clearly like and are driven to not only explore for yourself, but to share what you find with whoever's reading or following or looking at your accounts. So, why do you do this? I mean, why do you have such a drive to seek this stuff out, learn from it, and support it by highlighting it and kind of lifting it up in your own feed? - Yeah, good question. I think it was initially my upbringing, 'cause I grew up an American, but grew up in Muslim Russia my whole life, and even before that, my family would move often, and then my parents, being American, we visited the United States once every five years, and I went to boarding school in Germany, and I've traveled a lot, just 'cause of that lifestyle, and when you move around a lot, you can choose to either have a had attitude about that, especially as a kid, or a good attitude, and often, I'd choose the bad attitude route. But then once I got there, I'd realize, oh, this is actually an interesting place. I would go out and explore. So all growing up, any place we visited or even moved to, I would go out and try to explore the cool things of the city, even if it wasn't a cool place at all. Like, there has to be something cool about it, and I'm glad my parents taught me that, kind of forced me to have that mindset, whereas now, I do think wherever you live, you can make the most of it for at least two years. There'll be enough of like, two year of content to explore, even if it's this tiny town, and DC is constantly changing, and it's interesting to see the businesses that come in here, but also the people of DC I find the most fascinating, and then getting to know them and their passions, you then get introduced to the businesses they like or the bars they like to hang out at or the neighborhoods they're passionate about, and so it really does force me to have a good attitude about where I live and not kind of get stuck in this mundane routine of life, which is why I explore and try to do photography, 'cause it's more, I guess for me, to force myself to fall in love with DC every day. - Yeah, especially biking and stuff. You definitely are gonna see more than the average person. - Yep, and I did get it involved, like, I moved into DC in 2007 and wasn't the biggest advocate of it. I first moved into a neighborhood called Ballston in Arlington, Virginia, which at that time I thought was so cool, and I would always tell people about it, and now that I've moved into the city, everyone's like, dude, Ballston's not that great. And like, if you live there, I don't wanna offend anyone, I actually enjoyed it when I was there, but I moved from there to Mount Pleasant in northwest, a neighborhood I love, and just became obsessed with DC. But even Ballston, I found some cool things there, and I always want to have that mentality. But after a few year of, since I moved to DC, there was like probably six months where I had such a bad attitude, I forget why, but I'm like, you know what, I actually don't like DC. And I remember a friend who would often visit, she visited, and she was like, this is the first time you've been negative about DC. And she was really concerned, but I'm grateful to say there was only six months out of my now 12 years that I did not love DC so much. The rest I truly have loved, and I continue to love it, and even having moved to southeast DC, I love it even more, 'cause it's such a different place, and it's a big enough city where you have everything, but small enough where you can get to know your neighborhood and invest, but also bike from southeast DC to northeast DC, and to northwest and then southwest and see the entire city. - That's so fascinating. I didn't realize that you moved around so much. So I see how you are with your daughter now. She just turned two, right? - She did, yep, Tuesday. - So I love to see, now that I know that, I can totally see you doing the same with her. You're taking her on all these journeys with you and adventures, and I often see you posting like, we were up at dawn or whatever, because she gets up at that hour. So, how do you navigate, as a parent to a young child, like, how do you navigate not making your Instagram feed completely about Addie? - Yeah, good question. - [Holly] I mean, so many parents, their feed becomes their kid. - Exactly, yeah. - [Holly] She makes appearances. - She does, she does. Yeah, I wanted to be very intentional about that, 'cause for one, I've been very open in my writing and on my social media about the fact that Addie was a surprise baby. My wife and I truly do love children but were truly not planning on having our own, and so, we're in the one percent that had a child that wasn't expecting it, and so I think part of that, 'cause we never wanted our own children, we didn't wanna have our entire identify wrapped around it, and also being on the other side of not having kids. Like, I love my friends who have children, but I don't wanna see your kids all the time on social media, and I still love them, but a lot of my friends, and myself as well, still are like, great, your kid said their first word. Every kid says their first word. And so I wanted to go into that, I wanted to be sensitive to people who either don't have children or don't want kids or don't like kids, and so I wanted to make sure that Addie would, of course, I love being a dad now that I am a surprise dad, but I love her and I wanna honor her, but I don't want my feed just to be about photos of her. So she actually does have her own Instagram account, 'cause my mother wants me to post all the time about Addie. And it's a private account that people who know her can follow, but it's consistent there. But for my feed, I wanna make sure at least Addie's not in it all the time. So I was scrolling through my feed recently, and I posted about her 'cause it was her birthday, and then one previous one before that, but then there was a wide gap of. - She gets one time a year. - Yeah, once a year. Sorry, Addie, you can suck it up. Just kidding. - Well, we always love, because you bring her to Instameets occasionally. - I do. - And it offers us new material. We can take photos of her running around having a great time. - Yeah, and that's been fun in DC, 'cause I think compared to other cities, especially in the Midwest where my family now lives, there are so many children, and I'm always surprised that even some cities are just build around kids, and my DC-ness kinda comes out, where recently, I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan at a museum, and in line for this interactive exhibit, and all of these kids cut in line, and my DC-ness came out being like, excuse me, I don't care if you're six. I was here first. I've been waiting here forever. But in that city, kids rule society, and so the parents are like, dude, they're six. Let them cut in line, whereas in DC, even if you have kids, like, no, I'm sorry, Addie, you need to wait your turn. And so I am grateful that in DC there aren't as many as kids and the society isn't kind of built around children, 'cause there's a lot of people here who don't wanna have kids or maybe can't have children. Like, you have to be sensitive to all that, and so, bringing her to Instameets, I've found that some people don't wanna be around kids, and that's totally cool, but a lot of people do, and since they're not with kids all the time, they are excited to go to one Instameet with a kid. And Addie does like to explore. Especially being on maternity leave for my wife, and I had paternity leave, we both don't like staying inside, so even being new parents, we're like, we cannot hibernate, so we went to so many museums, and we would just take Addie with us, and now she truly loves going outside. At a recent snow day, we were inside for like two hours, all going stir crazy, and Addie went to the door, got dressed, and said, outside, like, we have to go, so we went outside and went to the Hirshhorn Museum. It was awesome, and so she definitely has her top three favorites. We recently went to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, which is one of her favorite museums, and that was a blast, and she just ate it up and we'll definitely go back there many times. - [Andy] Do you still need tickets, or? - No, actually. So it's off-season now. So they recently changed this. So for this month, through the end of February, during the week, Monday through Friday, you can just walk in, any time. So on Tuesday, we did that, the first day back from the government shutdown. And so we welcomed everyone back to that museum, and Addie did realize it was her birthday and learned a few new words that day, and she literally went up to every security guard and went, Addie, birthday, sing, and literally every security guard sang her happy birthday, even the more cranky ones. It was actually really cool, and we had such a blast. - [Andy] Good first day back for them. - Great first day back. - Does she show any sort of interest in photography when she sees you pull out the camera? - She does now, actually. The last three months now, the moment I put out my phone, she runs up to me and goes cheese and makes a very cheesy, but I think, adorable, and again, I'm biased, of smile, which is really fun, and she does have her own phone, which is a remote control for these lights we have in our room that she's always asking for. - [Andy] I was about to say, what? - I know, right? Yeah, she's on Instagram, she has her own iPhone. - [Andy] And a car downtown. - Totally, totally, this is the new generation right here. - [Andy] And you do have a job, right? - I do. I know, I know, people always ask. So like, I think that's where a lot of the energy comes in place, and I love the Post, and they are a very flexible workplace. But I do actually have a nine to five job, but a lot of jobs at the Post, and I think in general in city settings, you can kind of make your own hours, so my boss often lets me go to different events, and I just like, make up the hours. - [Andy] Oh, that's amazing. - But and also, working downtown, I love working downtown, because it's so close to so many different neighborhoods in DC. So it actually makes it, when you bike, you can bike from downtown to Dupont in just a few minutes, to the National Mall. - [Andy] So you bike from southeast to the Post every day. - I do, yes, I do. - [Andy] Like, even today? - So not today, 'cause it was snowing, and it was actually really icy. I slipped twice, so I'm like, I will eat it if I take the bike. - [Andy] So the temperature doesn't affect you but the snow will. - Yeah, the snow will, yeah, 'cause it makes it slippery, and 'cause I'm so clumsy, I would probably get hit by a car in the snow. - [Andy] That's like a five-mile bike ride, right? - It is, yeah. Actually one advantage of southeast as well is I do Capital Bikeshare. I'm an original member of Capital Bikeshare. - [Andy] Oh, okay. - Proud of that. - [Andy] That makes more sense, I guess. - Yeah, and they're awesome bikes, but now they have electric bikes, which are hard to find west of the river, but east of the river at my dock, almost every day, there is an electric bike, and that cuts down. I can bike from southeast DC to the Washington Post in 12 minutes on an electric bike. - [Andy] Oh, wow, yeah. - [Holly] That's awesome. - Which is faster than the metro, faster than the car. - I see the mall the time, but I'm always like, I never see them at the dock, and I'm like, yeah. - Yeah, that or they're always broken, whereas literally, in Fairmont specifically, at the intersection of Minnesota and Pennsylvania, you'll always find an electronic bike. I should not have said that. - [Holly] Your secret's out. - I know, now someone's gonna take it, take it! - [Andy] When do you wake up, like four a.m., waiting there for it to show up? - I know, I know, I should, I should. Actually, that's one advantage for us, like, being parents, 'cause Addie wakes up early, and it's forced me to be a morning person. So now I'm like, great, and I'm a night owl, so now I have even more hours to explore, 'cause I get up so early. - Like, how many hours of sleep do you get a day? - I get seven. - Oh, that's pretty good. - Which isn't too bad. So, most days I get seven. - I feel like you're up 22 hours a day, as much as you do. - I know, sometimes it does feel that way. So I go to a gym class that's really early. It starts at five a.m.. - Wait, wait, you go to the gym? - I do. - And then you bike? - Yep, yeah. So that's part of getting 20,000 steps a day at the minimum is I have to do that. I have to go to the gym, and also, I think, the one advantage of having a surprise baby, both my wife and I are pretty independent, so like, great. 'Cause it's not part of our entire identify, let's preserve other parts of our identify, so we have a whole system in place where once a week I get a free night where I can go out and do whatever I want, and sometimes I just do that and explore. I'll call a friend and we'll just grab our phones or cameras and go to a neighborhood and just explore, and that's my free night, and then my wife gets a free night. We go on one date night every week, which could look different. Sometimes it's at home watching Netflix and chilling. Just kidding. - [Andy] This is PG. - Totally, just kidding, just kidding. Or sometimes it's we hang out with friends, but it's a date night for Shay and I. And then we have, I guess we have an extra night, and then weekends, we be strategic, but because we're both independent and value that, we are very much a team, so we do true co-parenting, where we also wanna work out, so she gets to go to her class, I'm with Addie, and then I get to go to my class when she's with the baby, so it makes it a lot more manageable. Again, I say that having just one, and I understand for the parents out there, when you have more than one, it complicates things. But we're enjoying life with just one. - Yeah, you're making it sound like such a breeze. Like, yeah, we got all this time, got all this sleep. - Totally, right? Though, to be honest, when we found out we were gonna be surprise parents, so many parents had horror stories, where it made us wonder, like, does anyone enjoy being parents? And even to this day, some of my friends, they look like a bus hit them every day, 'cause they have three kids, and then they tell me they're gonna have a fourth kid, and they're excited about it. They don't seem excited about it, but they're saying they're excited about it. But I'm always like, dude, you look like a bus hit you every day. And so, I'm grateful that I just have one, but it's because of all the horror stories, we thought it would be a lot harder than it's been, and Addie's a more chill child, which makes it easier. But I'm glad that people told us it would be the worst thing ever, 'cause it's not the worst thing ever. And so, now we have a different baseline. - Okay, so we all know that you travel a lot. You travel a lot for work, and just for your own pleasure, you all make an effort to go on family vacations. You started when Addie was pretty little. - That's true. - Like, very young, I think. - Very young, yeah. - So how do you approach your travel itinerary? Do you approach it from a photography standpoint? Do you think about, I have this trip coming up. How am I gonna approach what I see and do? Do you look at it through a lens, or do you just sort of happen to have your lens with you, and you document it? - Yeah, kind of a mix of both. So we, because travel's so important to both my wife and I, both she and I travel probably once every four weeks for our jobs and then we personally travel a lot, and my wife works in the hotel industry, so it makes traveling a little bit easier, which is nice. But our first trip with our daughter was when she was 12 weeks old, we went to Cuba, and I documented that for the Washington Post, and that trip was very much, it actually played to her advantage. Because she was so young, she just slept all the time, and so we just strapped her to our chest and we just walked for hours and hours and hours, 'cause actually having a kid, it's easier to travel if you just walk, which is perfect, 'cause for me, that means that I can just strap her on and go to alleys, as creepy as that sounds, and just walk for hours and hours, and to me, that's vacation. That's what I love about traveling. So probably a mix of both, and I did do some research beforehand. I love the website Atlas Obscura, 'cause it has some of the most, I like the random things in a city, and usually, they're the best things to photograph. - So that explains why your stories are so great with so much detail and things like that? - Exactly, that and research. Yeah, I love research. Actually, me and a guy named FrenchieYankee on Instagram who's gone to some IGDC events, we were talking about how we both love research, and you find the best things. And even today, in a meeting, I was multitasking, I was paying attention to the meeting, but I was going in on Google Maps in a different neighborhood called Marshall Heights, which is in southeast DC, and just going street by street and seeing what I could find, and that's a good way to research, research local blogs, Atlas Obscura, and I try to plan out an itinerary, but my wife likes to not have an itinerary at all. So we try to do a mix of both. But I do approach it from a photography lens, where like, what are the things I definitely wanna go in and photograph, especially if it's in an abandoned building. I love abandoned buildings. They're so cool to photograph, and there's some amazing abandoned things, even in DC, actually. In my neighborhood, there's a few abandoned houses that are really fun to photograph. - [Holly] Do you go inside? - I have, yeah, which recently. - [Andy] Legally, he can't disclose this. - Yeah, I know, I know, shoot. Am I gonna get in trouble? There's one, it's actually amazing. It's on a hill in southeast DC in a neighborhood called Randall Heights, which has amazing historic homes, and it was abandoned for years, and it's a huge property right by a school on a hill overlooking the whole city. So you can see everything, and there is a small crack that someone did and it eventually opened, and so I was able to slip through there, and it's multi-levels, and I think growing up in Russia, I'm a little bit more fearless. I'm like, all right, even if I get hurt, it's worth it. So explored all the rooms. - [Holly] Anything for the 'gram. - Yeah, anything for the 'gram, truly, and it was amazing. There's a barn in the back yard, but a few months ago, it got sold to a developer and they're gonna tear down the whole thing and build something else. - Starbucks. - Hopefully a coffee shop, yeah, another Starbucks. - Mixed use condo building. - Yeah, probably, probably. But, so there's not as many left, but there are a few abandoned places, especially in southeast DC. - Well, Austin, I wanna thank you for joining us. It's been a good talk. - Yeah, thanks for having me. You guys are awesome. - How can people find you? What do you prefer, Twitter, Instagram? - Definitely Instagram, and again, it's @austinkgraff with an F, two F's, not an S. - And same on Twitter and everything else? - Yes, yeah, yeah, 'cause that's it on Facebook, on Twitter as well. - And Yelp. - On Yelp as well, yeah. I love being a Yelp Elite, and Google Maps as well, which you're a Google guide, right, a local guide? - Yes, it's a lot of fun to upload to all those sites. - Oh, it's so fun. It's all based on point systems, which motivates me, and it's all just like, holding the carrots in front of you, and it's amazing. But definitely follow IGDC as well and @someguy and @golightly as well, 'cause they're awesome, and truly, they're inspiration, which is why I was honored to be on this podcast, 'cause I think everyone in DC follows both of you and I have learned a lot about this city, but also people and photography from the both of you. So thank you. - Aw, thank you. - Appreciate it, thank you so much. - And we loved having you, so thank you for taking the time. - Let's do it again. - Stay wired. - Stay wired, that's right. Keep on exploring.