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TM
D. Patrick Dillon
Author of the Falcon Hollow Mystery Series
Through the Lens
By Tess Granger, Digital Editor
When you spend enough time behind a camera, you learn that familiar places have a way of disappearing.
Not literally, of course. Main Street is still there in the morning. The river still winds toward Falcon Lake. People still cross Civic Circle on their way to work, stop to talk outside the post office, or find a quiet place along the Riverwalk as evening settles over town. But familiarity makes it easy to stop noticing the details.
For Falcon Hollow's 140th anniversary, I wanted to notice them again.
I didn't set out to photograph every landmark or create a complete portrait of the town. I simply took my camera and spent some time looking—at places shaped by generations before us, places we pass every day, and places where Falcon Hollow continues to make new memories.
These are only a few photographs of one small Maryland town.
But through my lens, they are Falcon Hollow.
The Old Mill
There are places in Falcon Hollow that seem to ask you to slow down. The Old Mill is one of them.
I had photographed it before, but this time I stayed awhile. I watched the sunlight move through the trees and across the old stone walls. I listened to the creek working its way around the rocks and beneath the wheel. For a few minutes, I put the camera down and simply looked.
That may be what I like most about this place. The town has changed around it, generations have come and gone, and the mill has long since stopped being simply a place where work was done. Yet the water keeps moving past it.
Eventually, I picked up my camera again.
There are newer buildings in Falcon Hollow and certainly busier places. But when you're trying to photograph 140 years of a community, sometimes the best place to begin is somewhere that reminds you just how much came before.
Mainstreet
Main Street is one of those places I photograph all the time without really intending to photograph Main Street.
There is always something else happening—a storefront opening for the morning, people stopping to talk on the sidewalk, traffic moving through downtown, or an event somewhere farther along the street. The camera is usually pointed at the story, and Main Street simply becomes its background.
For this photograph, I wanted the street itself to be the story.
Standing near the arrival circle and looking toward the center of town, I noticed how much of Falcon Hollow is contained in one view. The older storefronts, the trees and flowers, the familiar streetlamps, and the road stretching ahead toward Civic Circle all belong to different chapters of the town's history, yet somehow they fit together.
Maybe that's why Main Street feels so familiar.
It isn't just a way to get from one end of town to the other.
For a lot of us, it's the way home.
Civic Circle
If Main Street is the way through Falcon Hollow, Civic Circle feels like the place where the town stops for a moment.
I've stood here with my camera more times than I can count. Parades pass through here. People gather around the gazebo for ceremonies and celebrations. Town Hall and the post office have appeared in the background of photographs I've taken for stories that had nothing to do with either one.
But on a quiet afternoon, Civic Circle tells a different story.
There were no crowds when I took this photograph. No event to cover. Just the flag moving above the gazebo, flowers surrounding the circle, and sunlight catching the brick of buildings that generations of Falcon Hollow residents have known.
I think I prefer it this way.
Because before the crowds arrive and after everyone goes home, Civic Circle is still here, waiting at the heart of town.
The Park
Some of my favorite photographs are the ones where nobody notices the camera.
This little park isn't where Falcon Hollow goes for championship games. The ballfield is small because the players are small, too. This is where children learn to hold a bat, run the bases, and discover that sometimes third base looks a lot like first when you're six years old. Nearby, younger brothers and sisters move between the playground and the grass while parents watch from beneath the trees.
I like that about this place.
There isn't much pressure here to be good at anything yet. T-ball, wiffle ball, a game of catch, an afternoon on the playground—mostly, they're just reasons to be outside together.
With Falcon Lake in the distance and another generation of Falcon Hollow growing up in the foreground, I couldn't help thinking that a town's history isn't only found in the places that have survived for 140 years.
Sometimes it's being made by the people who have only been here for six.
North Riverwalk Hiking / Walking Trail
Falcon Hollow looks different when the daylight begins to disappear.
I took this photograph along the North Riverwalk trail, well above the shops and activity of the Riverwalk District. Up here, the river is quieter. The lamps along the path were beginning to glow, the last color of the evening was reflecting across the water, and every few minutes someone would pass me on the trail before disappearing around the next bend.
During the day, this is a place for walking, jogging, and getting from one part of town to another. At twilight, the pace seems to change.
It becomes a place to stay awhile.
I packed up my camera more than once that evening and then took it back out again because the light had changed. A few minutes later, it changed again.
That's the thing about photographing Falcon Hollow.
Sometimes the town doesn't ask you to find the picture.
It asks you to wait for it.
I actually like this version better because it creates a distinction between the North Riverwalk as a quieter natural corridor and the more developed Riverwalk District at the mouth of the river.
4th of July 2026
There are times when being behind the camera means standing apart from the moment you're trying to capture.
The Fourth of July is never one of them.
I took this photograph from the Falcon Hollow Camp and RV Park, looking out across Falcon Lake as the fireworks began. Around me were families in lawn chairs, children waiting impatiently for the next burst of color, and conversations that stopped every time the sky lit up.
For a photographer, fireworks are irresistible. Light, color, reflections on the water—everything you're taught to look for is happening at once.
But that isn't what I remember most.
I remember lowering the camera for a few minutes and watching with everyone else.
Maybe that's the right place to end this journey through Falcon Hollow. I've photographed old stone walls, familiar streets, quiet water, and places where children are just beginning to make their own memories.
But a town isn't only the places we photograph.
It's the people standing beside us when we finally put the camera down.
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