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Washington, DC

My friend Deepak loaned me a Nikon D40 camera to test drive, including wide angle and telephoto zoom lenses.

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 6M). Around 50 pictures included.

The Smithsonian Institute

My first stop in DC was the Smithsonian Institute. My goal was to attend the exhibit Jim Henson's Fantastic World at the Smithsonian's International Gallery. I did and it was cool, but they didn't allow any photography there, thus I shall write nothing further about that

Instead, I'll describe how, before going to the International Gallery, I stopped by the Smithsonian Institution building known as The Castle. It had a very classic, "old building" look to it. The blue sky and garden next to it added to the effect.

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Three shots of some windows in The Castle.

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A shot of the towers in The Castle. A wide angle shot of the entire building. And one of a vase with flowers in the foreground, the garden in the middle, and The Castle in the background.

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In the garden, there was a sundial. It was a sunny day, so I took a few shots from a few different angles. You can see my feet and shadow in the fist picture.

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And finally, a narrow depth of field shot of flowers in the foreground and The Castle, out of focus, in the background.

The National Mall

I saw a few statues in the Garden Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden (thanks to Mary Ann Sullivan's web page, Hirshhorn Sculpture Gardens--Index Page, which let me identify what the hell those sculptures were), as well as the Washington Monument and Capitol Building from a distance.

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Three pictures from the Hirshhorn Sculpture Gallery. The first and third are of a statue called "Kiepenkerl" by Jeff Koons in 1987. The second is called "Are Years What? (for Marianne Moore)" by Mark Di Suvero in 1967.

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There were a lot of people around. The first picture is a slightly surreptitious shot of people crossing the stret. The second and third are of the Washington Monument. There were people playing Ultimate Frisbee on the grass. I wanted ot include them in a shot, but the game was out of the frame. Only one guy is visible on the lower right corner. From the look of things, they weren't all that good, though I must admit it was tempting to play (even though it was damn hot and humid, I didn't want to fuck up my ankle/tendon, I had an expensive borrowed camera with no safe place to leave it, I wasn't wearing appropriate ultimate clothes, and didn't want to get completely hot and sweaty, and I didn't know these people and how they took to strangers, but otherwise, I would've been all over that...).

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The Capitol Building. I had to wait a while for all the cars, trucks, etc. to pass by so I could get a clear shot of it.

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For some reason, I found the line of portable toilets to be somewhat fascinating. I don't know why. The last shot is of the line of trees lining the edge of The Mall.

National Museum of the American Indian

To be honest, the NMAI was recommended because of its cafeteria. They have food from different cultures, such as Meso-American, South American, and Pacific Northwest. It was a bit pricey, but I didn't pay anything to get in the musem, and the food was pretty good.

Later, I went to the National Air and Space Museum, but found it to bee too crowded and left after only going to a gallery or two (yes, the Smithsonian Institute and their free museums most definitely rock).

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The NMAI building is very cool looking, very curvey and such. Fountains on the outside. I don't think I took the picture intending to get the bird in flight, it just sort of happened.

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Inside the building, there is a main atrium with about 5 levels that look down upon it. At the very top is a skylight. I took a few shots of that with different exposure settings.

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The ceiling surrounding the skylight has ridges (like ruffles potato chips). A few shots of them for your viewing pleasure.

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I noticed some rainbows on the floor. It was actually light passing through a prism being split into the spectrum. I took a few shots of it, playing around with some camera settings.

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The first picture is of the shadow of the skylight (or sunbeam coming from the skylight). Unfortunately, there was a bench right by the lower left side of the sunbeam circle, and a woman sitting there. I'm on the 5th floor, shooting down with a telephoto lens. It seemed like it looked like I was trying to take a picture looking down her blouse and a) that's kind of rude and b) she wasn't that good looking, so I just gave up trying to take shots of the shadow/sunbeam.

Looking straight out, I noticed a window with prisms on it, and realized that was the source of the spectral lines on the ground below. You can see they're at various angles to throw the light in different places on the ground (5 stories) below. This was looking out from a balcony to the wall on the far side of the atrium (again, more telephoto fun).

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The glass on a door going to an office had cool images on it. I took two shots, one to see the door better and one to see the glass patterns better. These patterns were all over the museum.

Outside of the National Archives Building

OK...after doing some image searches on the web, I've decided it was the National Gallery of Art (the west building), with the fountain just off to the right of the big, majestic stairs.

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The first picture is a close-up shot of one of the stone columns. There's a nice half-dark, half-light thing going on there. I was interested in trying to capture the texture of the stone.

The second shot is pulling back to show part of the column. The third shot is looking up to the top of the column. OK...I just looked it up, and these look like Ionic Columns, with the "capital" at the top (the scrolls at the top of the shaft).

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There was cool ornimentation going along the ceiling, as seen in the first shot. Again, the top of the column with the scroll-like capital there. And the third shot shows more ornimenation.

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The base of the columns, three different shots and focus points.

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Close-ups of the bases of the columns with different exposures and focus points.

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And finaly, on the right side of the building. I took three different shots of the water to experiment with a smoth vs. chunky look.

Related pictures:
Monongahela National Forest, WV
Patapsco State Park, MD

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