Inessential Stuff

So our visit to Washington, DC included The Great Eastern Earthquake of 2011, and we left town right as the city braced itself for Hurricane Irene.  It was all just  a little calamitous.  Fortunately, Irene didn’t hit DC too hard, and it did create for a really magical few moments.  On our last day, right after we had boarded a tour bus for a visit to the monuments at night, storm clouds started to blow in.  They were high, wispy, relatively thin clouds, and they came along right at dusk.  As the bus rolled out from Union Station, the sky began to turn pink.  Not moderately pink, but spectacular pink and gray. Unfortunately, I was stuck on the bus, so I couldn’t get any shot I wanted.  Fortunately, the bus drove slowed down by the Capitol and I could squeeze off a few shots.  By the time we turned the corner and went down to the Jefferson Memorial, it was mostly over.  But it was really something to see.

The monuments at night were cool, too (Marcus decided that while Lincoln is his favorite president, the Jefferson Memorial is his favorite monument).  And then we hopped the metro for the second-to-last-time and headed to the hotel.  One word about the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit system:  phenomenal.  And I really loved the combination of curved and straight lines created by the tubular metro stations.  When we rode them the next morning to the airport to go from one Washington to the other, it was sad to say goodbye to DC.

The photographs from the final day in Washington, DC are here, and, as before, itty-bitty captions are at the bottom left.

Our second day was spent in DC, taking in the Capitol, Union Station and the Spy Museum.  We had planned on more, but then the Big Eastern Earthquake of 2011 hit, and all of the federal monuments and museums shut down. So . . . we decided to head back to Nationals Park for another baseball game.  (By the way, being jostled by an earthquake while touring the interactive International Spy Museum, which breeds suspicion and paranoia, is a fascinating experience).

The next day, it was on to Pittsburgh to check out PNC Park, home of the Pirates, and now my favorite baseball stadium.  It has spectacular views of downtown Pittsburgh and the Roberto Clemente Bridge (which is closed to traffic on game days). We drove back to DC that night, so it was a long day, but totally worth it. If you want, check out the photographs here, or stick around for a word about lenses:

The first day in DC, I took all my main lenses with me:  a 24-70 mm, a 70-200 mm, a 12-24 mm wide-angle, and a fisheye wide-angle 12 mm.  The result was I was ready for anything, and my back was killing me.  It was really heavy.  So after that, I took just the extremely versatile 24-70 and the fisheye.  The advantage of the fisheye?  Well, it is my newest lens, and it’s my smallest.

The disadvantage of the fisheye is that it causes vertical and horizontal lines at the edges of the frame to bend in distortion.  So instead of a straight line, you get curvy lines.  I thought it might be fun to play around with that effect.  But the thing is, it really ought to be used conservatively, especially with architecture with straight lines (say, capitol buildings and bridges).  Anyway, you’ll see a lot of curvy lines here.  On the plus side, the lens is great for round shapes, like capitol domes or the circle of a baseball stadium.

As usual, look for itty-bitty captions at the bottom left.

In what is now something of a tradition, Marcus, my dad and I went on a baseball vacation this summer.  Last year we hit NY and Philly.  This year we went to DC and Pittsburgh.  To make the galleries more manageable, I’ll break this into three galleries, the first of which includes cool architecture from Chicago’s O’Hare airport, some early touring of DC memorials, presidential mascots, and a very jetlagged boy.  Look at the bottom left to see tiny captions, and enjoy the photographs.

Another summer, another camping trip.  This year, we remembered the tent poles, which was good.  We stayed at Moose Creek Reservoir, but didn’t see any moose, which is too bad.  The water was a bit cold and slimy for swimming, but the temperature was perfect for a hike to Elk Falls.  We found dragonflies, went on picture-taking expeditions, and  continued our tradition of passing on s’mores and torching marshmallows instead.  Here are some photographs from the trip.

Here is the second part of Marcus’ baseball season.  He capped a fun year by getting to pitch against a single batter.  You can see how it went in this gallery.  You can read tiny captions at the bottom right of the photographs.

Marcus is typically quite emphatic. So it makes sense that he would play baseball emphatically. Here is a gif of him scoring an emphatic run (I like the way the catcher watches his feet to make sure he touches the plate. Classic).

Guess who harvested his school-project baby carrots today?