Category Archives: Featured Photo

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


This is not Oklahoma by katyray

All day long, tourists wear down the stone of our monuments a few microns at a time with each step, each touch, huffing and puffing as they climb the stairs.  As a parent or school teacher you have to keep an eye on your flock to make sure they don’t take candy from strangers or fall into the bushes.  As a kid you wonder how you can get your hands on some candy or just how long you can hide in the bushes before you are found.  After a while spent mulling around, possibly reading the first sentence or two of the engraved president’s speech, postcards are purchased and this site gets checked off the list by capturing a bad camera phone trophy.  Come on kids, let’s head to the Hard Rock Cafe for a burger or a nice pig sandwich.

The night guard flips the sign from “open” to “closed”, radios to his buddies that quadrant four is secure, and soon Operation Foxtrot Charlie Delta (five card draw) commences in the bowels of the monument.  Honest Abe breathes a sigh of relief that he’s made it through another day.  He notices that he’s starting to get dirty, no thanks to the pigeons perched on his shoulders and the smog that saturates the air.  What was once a deafening scene of chaos is now peaceful, serene, and calm.  It’s his favorite time of the day.

Suddenly, far away in the darkness of night, Katy Ray’s camera makes a clicking noise that pierces the air, capturing this beautifully simple, grainy image on her Kodak T-MAX 3200 film.  The guards pause in silence, staring at each other, listening for more clicks.  Honest Abe lifts an eyebrow and scans the grounds for any signs of horseplay.  But after a few minutes, the card game resumes and the photographer slinks away into the pitch black as the scene comes to an end, only to be repeated again tomorrow.  And the day after that.

Featured Photo, WMATA
By

Featured Photo


‘B&W Train Tunnel’
courtesy of ‘MikaAltskan’

What a year it has been for Metro, and the first month isn’t over yet. Service on the rails has been particularly messy this January, and just when it looked like Metro had decided to take the fight to the people, its general manager calls it quits. Despite last year’s tragedies and this year’s very rocky start, there’s still a magic about the system. Architect Harry Weese‘s vision for the Metrorail stations is iconic, modern, and yet still brutalist in nature.

For me, the best part of the system is the interface between the public parts of the station — the platforms, mezzanines, and escalators — and the inaccessible areas, especially the tunnels and the rail bed. Teenage photographer MikaAltskan managed to snap this shot looking into the tunnel from one of the stations. It shows off the curves of the concrete and rails, and the lights punctuating the distance before veering into an unknown, yet familiar place.

The next time you are waiting for the train that seems to never want to arrive, take a look around you and notice the cathedral-like look of the station where you happen to be waiting.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


DCA by brokensquare

Ah, the airport.  Is it strange that I find it to be a magical place?  It’s where people come together, some sharing the same flight, others departing to different destinations, but all part of a worldwide system that just somehow works.  You make your reservation online, pack your tiny tube of toothpaste, roll in with your luggage, wait in line to check in, take your shoes off, watch as your cigarette lighter passes right through security, get to the gate and scope out your fellow passengers, grab some food to bring on the plane with you (since the days of free meals are long gone), turn your portable electronics off so as not to interfere with the plane that was built in the 1970’s, sit back, relax, help the person next to you with their oxygen mask before placing yours firmly around your nose, resist tampering with the smoke alarm in the lavatory, read SkyMall and wonder who actually buys this stuff.  You gaze out the window and admire the polished wings, held together with rivets as they pierce through wispy clouds at speeds of over 400 miles per hour.  Oh but wait – what’s that?  Before you know it you’re placing your tray and seat back in their full upright position and the stewarde – um, flight attendant is welcoming you to Los Angeles.  It’s magic I tell you.  Without breaking a sweat, you’ve flown, through the air mind you, to the opposite side of the country.

But like most magic tricks, there’s more than meets the eye.  While you were begging for an exit row seat and anxiously waiting for the gate attendant to call Seating Area 3, the ground crew was loading your luggage, stocking those $10 boxes of airplane food, fueling the plane, de-icing the wings, pushing it away from the gate, oh, and taking photos of the spectacular sunrises that bath the runways in deep hues of purple, orange, and yellow.  Magic, I tell you.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


‘1001a’
courtesy of ‘dr_kim_veis [”o ]’

I’m fascinated, endlessly so, by good portrait photography. It is but a moment in the life of a person — sometimes a stranger, others someone we know, but only through the spotlight. That moment is often telling. The individual’s character, their outlook on life, even their mood are forever immortalized in one sixtieth of a second. The portrait also reflects on the photographer, perhaps in a more subtle way. What does their use of color, light, and framing convey?

Dirk Mevis‘s portrait leapt out at me from the We <3 DC pool. His use of light to highlight not just his subject but also the tableau around her is subtle, yet eye popping. The subject is also intriguing: what’s she looking at? Is she worried? What is she waiting for? And what do those wilted flowers add to the picture? And the darkness?

A good portrait leaves the subject as much a mystery as before. Maybe even more so. This one is worth seeing large.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Keep your pets and children inside during a blizzard by gerdaindc

Have you heard the rumor?  Due to the perfect combination of cool and moist weather patterns, DC could be in for a whole lot of snow this winter.  Our twenty inches that fell earlier this month could foreshadow much more white stuff to come.

Being from Denver, I love snowstorms, especially blizzards.  The bigger the better as far as I’m concerned.  I love how quiet things are when it snows and how it can transform a dirty, ugly city into a beautiful, serene wonderland.  Snowstorms can bring random strangers closer together, give people an excuse to stay home from school or work, and make for some great photographs.  Yet despite all of this, some people hate snow, hate the cold, and can’t wait for the sweaty, humid days of summer to return.

We’ve loved all of the snow photos that you’ve been adding to our Flickr pool.  This shot by gerdaindc takes me back to my childhood days when the kids in my neighborhood would build snowmen, go sledding, and depending on how ambitious we were, build igloos.  We may have even thrown snowballs at cars, but in those days it was all just innocent fun.

Featured Photo
By

Feature Photo


‘Boulder Bridge’
courtesy of ‘architeuthis dux’

If you guessed that our photo pool would be filled with snow pictures this week, you were right and deserve a prize. Almost as many pictures as millimeters of snow, and we rounded up some of the best yesterday. That’s not going to stop me choosing another snow picture as our feature photo for the week.

When the first failed attempt to purchase the land that would become Rock Creek Park was introduced in the Senate in 1867, Sen. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, chairman of the Public Buildings and Grounds committee, said of the proposed park, “it has running water; it has rugged hills; it has picturesque scenery; it has abundance of varied forest timber; it has a native undergrowth blushing with beauty.”

It is this “picturesque scenery” that photographer architeuthis dux found when he wandered past the historic Boulder Bridge. Built in 1902 to carry Beach Drive over the creek, the bridge seems to have been waiting for this snowfall and photo opportunity. The snow, the creek, the quiet serenity, even the slight sepia coloring all combine to create a stunning picture that many won’t believe is inside the heart of our city.
Continue reading →

Featured Photo
By

Feature Photo


Kent 03 by Yospyn

As much as we try to fight it every year, winter has finally settled in upon us.  The days of patio dining and trips to the shore are over, replaced by more home cooked meals and vacations to warm destinations.  The time has come when we must find where we stored our winter hats, heavy coats, and the mental strength to make it through to spring.  I don’t know about you, but my mind switches gears when it realizes that there are months of dismal weather to come.  The world slows down, giving me time to reflect, rejuvenate, and renew.

The photo above by local photographer, Joshua Yospyn, depicts a man who has been through many winters of reflection.  You can see the accrued wisdom in his eyes and peace in his soul.  The dark shades of his coat, hat, and umbrella accentuate the intense color of his eyes, the ghostly paleness of his skin, and the frosty red tip of his nose.  What appears to be a window reflection in the lower right is an enigma according to the photographer – he has no idea what it is or how it got there.  This leads me to wonder, does Old Man Winter actually exist or is he an apparition?  I’ll ponder that as I sip on an Irish coffee under the comfort of my warm blanket.  Wake me up when the cherry blossoms start blooming.

Featured Photo, The Features
By

Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of
‘ ‘ courtesy of ‘erin m’

Snow. The first time in the season is always a little magical. It’s rarely too much, not often disruptive, and it’s as pretty as can be. That first snowfall is romantic, idyllic. The city sort of goes quiet under a blanket of hush.

Many people don’t like winter, with its cold and darkness. But winter has always been my favorite time of year. It’s the perfect time of year. The stifling mess that is summer is but a memory. The fall, with it’s picture perfect days, is just behind us. Ahead is the birth of a new season. But, right now, for the next few months, it is winter’s turn.

It’s a time for reflection, of course. It is also a time to rest, to see family and friends. To eat in gluttonous abandonment, to laze around the house and enjoy yourself. Like no other season, this is the season of parties and fun.

Continue reading →

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


…and the DJ Played All Night Long by Rolenz

I’m always awestruck when I see a photograph of star trails.  Like macro photographs, they show you things that your eyes can’t see on their own as well as show off the sexiness of photography.  While star trails can be captured with both film and digital cameras, digital gives you the advantage of creating a multiple exposure composite photo like the one above.  This shot, taken with a Nikon D90 near Skyline Drive, has an accumulated exposure time of about 60 minutes and is composed of twelve, 5 minute long exposures, taken at f/3.5, ISO 200, 18mm (according to the photographer).  Had this been shot with film, you would have to pray that your exposure was long enough to create the trails while not blowing out the light of the sunset.

Star trail photography takes a little bit of skill and a whole lot of patience.  You will definitely need a tripod of some sort, and make sure you have something in the foreground to make the shot more interesting.  Minimize the ambient light by getting as far away from city lights as you can and by shooting on a night with little to no moon.  You’ll likely want to use a wide angle lens and a big aperture to let in as much light as possible, and a low ISO setting to minimize noise.  If you have star trail photos of your own to share, leave them in the comments.

Essential DC, Featured Photo, Life in the Capital, The District
By

Feature Photo


I’d Very Much Enjoy a Cup of Tea by M.V. Jantzen

It was difficult to decide which photo to write about this week, but in the end I decided to go with one that captures an amazing event that is still fresh in my mind, the DC Tweed Ride.  I don’t think anyone expected DC’s first tweed ride to be such a phenomenal success, yielding hundreds of dandy bicyclists in every imaginable form of old timey garb.  On a perfect sunny day in DC, in a small alley at 8th & H street NE, I was transported to a time when people actually knew how to dress well and behave in a courteous manner.  In fact people were even smoking tobacco in their pipes, not the usual pipe-smoking material DC is known for!  As I rode through the city alongside the last group of cyclists, everyone was full of cheer and good spirit, smiling from ear to ear.

While there were many great tweed ride photos in our pool and elsewhere on Flickr, M.V. Jantzen’s photo really caught my eye.  I love the angle from which this shot was taken, the sophisticated and content look beaming from his subject, and the great use of fill flash to balance the exposure of the dark foreground with the bright background.

I say, old chap, is it possible to do another tweed ride again sometime soon?

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photos


‘Laaaaaaaa!’ by spoffy

While Halloween has come and gone, I thought it would be fun to do a roundup of some the spookiest photos in our pool (which by the way is full of some amazing photos, fellow Flickrites – keep it up!).  I personally don’t get too excited about putting a costume together for the holiday but I love seeing what other people come up with.  Between trick-or-treating, the Dupont High Heel Race,  spiderwebs spun across front yards, and skeletons hanging from doorways, it’s a scary time of the year.  Not quite as scary as the arrival of the summer interns, but nonetheless, scary.  More photos after the jump!

 
Continue reading →

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Skyline Drive Color 2 by afagen

The time is here when the green shades of summer transform into fall’s multiple shades of red, orange, and yellow, definitely one of my favorite times of the year.  It’s time to break out your favorite sweaters, your corduroys, and over the last week, your umbrellas and rain coats.  I may not have time to visit Skyline drive this year, but luckily Flickrite Afagen was there to capture this beautiful photo of the foliage for us.  Seeing this shot makes me want to hop on my cafe racer motorcycle (which I have yet to acquire) to take a ride through the beautiful hues of autumn, stirring the leaves as I rumble by.

One key ingredient to getting a nice shot of the fall colors is having a good set of filters.  On a sunny day you’ll definitely need a UV filter to cut through the haze.  You might also try using a warming filter to give the colors, well, a warmer feel.  There are numerous vantage points to shoot from along Skyline drive.  The hard part is finding a time when the colors have peaked and the crowds have not.  The good news is, like the annual blooming of the cherry blossoms, if you miss your chance to photograph the fall foliage this year, there’s a good chance it will happen again next year.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo

Ring Toss by Carly and Art
Ring Toss by Carly & Art

Ever since seeing the Edward Burtynsky exhibit and attending Saturday’s lecture by Dr. William Rees at the Corcoran, I can’t stop thinking about Man vs Nature.  As Dr. Rees explained (in a very eloquent and scientific manner), there are fundamental differences between our behaviors that make it virtually impossible for man to coexist with nature in a closed system.  At our current rate of population growth and resource consumption, the planet simply cannot sustain us forever.  To summarize his speech, unless drastic policy changes are put into place by our governments and we start to think globally instead of selfishly, well, we’re doomed.

This week’s featured photo is a demonstration of nature’s struggle against man.  Or is it?  Despite having several rings of concrete around its base, the tree is growing and doing everything it should be doing.  The concrete, as far as the tree is concerned, is only a slight annoyance.  I tend to agree with George Carlin’s philosophy about the state of the planet which is, “The planet is fine.” Continue reading →

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Nathan Kelly by MikaAltskan

Local photographer Mika Altskan appears to have unprecedented access to a gravity defying group of athletes (or super heroes).  Whether they’re pulling an E.T. move on their bike or skating horizontally through the air, he’s there to capture their raw talent with his camera.  Aside from the great stop action in the shot above, the color, the low point of view, and the timeless, carefree emotions that are portrayed make this shot a winner.  The icing on the cake for me is the lens flare, something that is sometimes accidental but adds a unique touch of cinematic beauty to the shot, a photographic snowflake if you will.  This photo makes me want to play hooky so I can practice my own skull cracking stunts in the final days of warm weather, but who am I kidding?  I’m only a daredevil when I’m in or on something motorized, preferably with an airbag.  I’ll leave the bone breaking activities to our youth.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


The Awakening #41 by andertho

One of my earliest memories of DC was when I visited The Awakening statue as a kid.  I have bad snapshots of me as an awkward looking teenager sitting in a giant hand coming out of the ground, proof that we’re all tourists at some point.  Looking at those photos now makes me feel old, and never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would live here.  Rarely do people dream of living in Washington DC, but rather places like Los Angeles, New York City, or Seattle.  But as fate would have it, here I am, over twenty years later living smack dab in the capital of America (f@&% yeah!), just nanoseconds from being obliterated by a nuclear bomb.  I digress.

Sadly, as most of us know, The Awakening no longer resides in DC but rather at National Harbor in Maryland where it was moved last year.  Photographer Tom Anderson, a fellow Fotoweek finalist, does a great job of capturing the giant in his new location.  I like his use of black and white here to accentuate the negative space between Goliath and the unsuspecting little girl as well as the sinister looking clouds in the background.  Where does this story end?  Does the bearded giant pluck the girl up and eat her like a gummy bear, or does she escape his grip only to move back to the area years later to become a K street lawyer or a nonprofit worker?  We’ll never know.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Blue Angel by M.V. Jantzen

I love Peeps.  The delicious tiny birds and bunnies come in a variety of pastel colors, have emotionless expressions on their cute, little squishy faces, and have become an integral part of our Easter celebrations.  Hell, even if you don’t celebrate Easter, it’s still fun to stuff these fluffy blobs of sugar in your face, chewing on their boneless, chemical-laden bodies. They’re completely harmless unless you’re a diabetic or are trying to watch your weight…or until they decide to kill you.  Sometimes it’s those that you least suspect who can cause the most amount of harm, and in this case it appears to be a giant blue Peep.  Revenge is sweet.

In all seriousness, the Peeps that you have no doubt noticed invading our city are the work of local street artist, DIABETIK.  These wheat pastings started cropping up during the winter and have been multiplying like, um, rabbits.  Along with the bitten Peeps you may have noticed other distressed treats such as broken gingerbread men and melted ice cream cones.  I wonder what’s next for DIABETIK?  Cupcakes that have been stepped on?  Jolly Ranchers covered in ants?  No matter what crops up, be on the lookout for mistreated treats looking for revenge, for you may be their next victim.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Drinkist by andertho

With the weather finally qualifying as “disgusting”, we could all use a drink couldn’t we?  Of course beer, chilled martinis, or Pimm’s always hit the spot, but with dangerous temperatures and heat indexes like we’ve had over the past few days, water is your best option to stay hydrated.  Hah!  I had you going there for a while didn’t I?  My recipe for cooling off is to head to my favorite neighborhood (air conditioned) bar and crack open a cool one, or you know, slurp down a swirly, tequila-flavored one as the case may be.

That’s not to say that this beautiful shot by andertho doesn’t make me want to drink gallons and gallons of pure H2O.  His choice of black and white is perfect here and I like the way the black and gray background splits the frame roughly into thirds.  Some effort and planning may have gone into this shot, but more than likely this sort of thing comes naturally for Mr. Anderson who has been shooting for years.  I can imagine the movement of the water as it splashes and spirals around on the bone dry stainless steel pan.  You want to take a drink but you can’t help but remember that countless little kids have slobbered all over the spout, only to be cleaned up by the night crew’s chemicals.

Wait, it is just me or does anyone else wish this was a beer fountain?

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


Where To Set One’s Eyes by Bogotron

Ah, the games we play in life.  I met this girl and I thinks she likes me.  I mean she touched my shoulder as she laughed at my joke and I’ve always heard that if they touch you then you’re in, right?  That Greenpeace volunteer up ahead has a clipboard and is stopping people on the street.  If I put on my sunglasses and ignore them, maybe they won’t ask me for a minute of my time.  These games we play are all about body language, about how we interact with each other, about how we communicate with each other without talking, about how we maneuver through our daily lives.  After all, life is the biggest game of them all.

Bogotron has captured a moment we’ve all experienced before, if not on a daily basis.  You’re crammed on a Metro car full of complete strangers.  The last thing you want to do is talk to them or make them think that it’s OK to talk to you.  Maybe you put on your headphones or maybe you burry your face in your Sudoko book.  Maybe you wear your sunglasses, one of my biggest pet peeves.  You might glance at someone but not for long — wouldn’t want to be caught staring.  You’ve had a hard day at the office and all you can think about is getting home, petting your dog, cracking open a beer, and doing it all again tomorrow.  This is your life, and mine too.

Featured Photo
By

Featured Photo


IMG_8562b by D©Bloom

Independence Day has come and gone, but I couldn’t resist highlighting this patriotic moment captured by D©Bloom.  While our Flickr pool was inundated with oodles of “Ooooo!” and “Ahhhhh!” photos of the fireworks on display at the National Mall, we see a more personal and patriotic celebration here of Uncle Sam launching some bottle rockets in his back yard.  I stared at this photo for a long time and wondered why I loved it so much until finally realized that it reminded me of how I feel every 4th of July.  Being born on Independence Day, I can’t help but to claim it as my own, as my day.  When I see the rockets’ red glare, my surroundings fade to black, the crowd disappears, and it’s just me and a shower of colors bursting in the night sky.

This photo was taken with a Canon G9 which, next to the newer G10, has earned a reputation of being one of the best point and shoot cameras on the market.  Unlike most point and shoots it offers full manual control of the camera and takes 12.1 megapixel RAW images, resulting in large, uncompressed photos that you can print big if you have a winner.  It’s a great all around camera and fairly compact, making it easy to sneak a photo of Uncle Sam when he isn’t looking.