Learning to Shoot: 17/52 - Washington, D.C.

This last weekend Paige and I took a trip out to Washington, D.C. It's just a 5.5 hour drive from our place and we've been wanting to go ever since we moved out here. My aunt and unlce live just outside of the city in Chevy Chase, MD, so we used their house as home base for the long weekend. They were wonderful hosts and my Uncle Mark rode into the city with us on Friday and spent the day touring around with us. Outside of all of the touring, we kept it pretty low key. They grilled out both nights and had very nice dinners out in their back yard. I couldn't have handled going out and partying with all of the biking, walking and standing we were doing during the day.

We brought our bikes with us since there is a bike path that goes from Bethesda (right next to Chevy Chase) all the way into D.C. and it would be a very convenient way to get into town and around the city. It was a 10 mile ride on the bike path from their house to the Lincoln Memorial.

Friday, we headed in and really hit a lot of the National Mall. We started at the Lincoln Memorial, where the trail dropped us off, then hit the Vietnam Memorial, WWII memorial, Washington Monument, the White House, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Capitol and the Library of Congress all before heading back home. Between the ride into the city, around the National Mall and back home, we put in about 25 miles on our bikes. It was a long day.

Saturday, we decided to put our bikes on the Metro and head in that way, rather than riding in. We took the Metro to Gallaudet University (the biggest deaf college in the US). Since almost all of Paige's sign language instructors attended school there, she really wanted to go see it. From there, we rode our bikes back downtown and hit up the National Archives, Smithsonian Natural History and American History museums, then rode across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetary. Again, it was another long day, capped off by a 1.5 hour commute on the Metro, due to construction and delays (coupled with a screaming baby) which made it seem even longer.

All in all, it was a great weekend. It was a lot of fun getting to D.C. since it was both of our first time to go there. Having the bikes was critical to getting to see as much as we did and I was really glad we brought them.

There is still a lot of stuff that we didn't get to see, but we hit a lot of the big points. I can't wait to go back again.

I didn't take a whole lot of artistically inspired pictures, but rather a lot of touristy pictures (I've been Here, type) so there isn't anything really special about a lot of them. As I get through the rest of the photos I took, I might come back and post some more, so check back.

This is a photo I got of the Washington Monument. It's a 2 picture verticle panoramic that I stitched together in Photoshop, then converted to B&W.

Paige and I in front of the White House. The President or Prime Minister of Israel was in town, I believe, so they had extra security and had the perimiter pushed even further back. We are standing on the Elipse, which is across the street from the White House. Normally, you can get right up to the fence.

Here are a few more pictures that I got while we were walking around. I finally got them processed and uploaded to the computer. I put a certain style of processing on these pictures that really bumps up the contrast, brings out more details and gives an older, kind of grainy look to them a little bit.

I then either converted them to 100% black and white, or I desaturated them about 75% where there is still a little bit of color remaining.