Category Archives: Featured Photo

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of philliefan99
fisheye nats park
courtesy of philliefan99

That is one great shot of Nationals Park! Phil employed his trusty fisheye lens to get nearly the entire seating bowl of the stadium into one shot. A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens which gives a 180 degree view. It’s a fairly specialized lens, and few photographers use them. This is mainly because the distortion that is created can become a tiresome effect and people lose interest in using it. Also, such a wide-angle lens is not useful in most situations. However, when employed properly, like the shot above, the results are outstanding!

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of MrStinkhead
Waiting
courtesy of MrStinkhead

Catching a completely candid moment on film (or digitally) is harder than you think. People naturally clench up when a camera is pointed at them; or they put their canned smile on their face; or they just turn away from the camera. That’s what makes Andy’s shot above so interesting. He caught this woman with a normal, contemplative look; a look we all have on our face from time to time. There is the added bonus of her looking straight into the camera, which gives the picture power. The viewer naturally wonders what she is thinking while her photo is taken; her theatrical makeup and hairdo only add to question. A truly candid moment. They aren’t captured very often.

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Featured Photo: Money

Photo courtesy of Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

courtesy of Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

The esteemed Brian is slaving away in the salt mines, busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest, all because of today’s deadline: tax day. Two days later on the calendar than usual, thanks to the 15th falling on a Sunday and then D.C.’s celebration of one of Lincoln’s other infamous and divisive moves: freeing the District’s slaves.

So in honor of what tax day is all about I present to you this photo of money. It’s nicely sharp considering that it was shot at 1/40th of a second and without a flash, information you can find yourself on Flickr’s EXIF information page for the photo. The macro lens used provides the tiniest amount of depth of field; the part of the bill closest to the lens is in focus but the crinkled corner, probably less than 1/2 an inch farther away, is blurred. That’s with an aperture choice that isn’t even as fully open as it could have been.

If you want to experiment with extreme close-up yourself it doesn’t necessarily require special gear. A lot of zoom functionality has a very close focal distance; I have a zoom lens that when turned to 200mm has a focal distance of 18 inches – which is less than 5 inches off the end of the barrel when it’s fully extended like that. You can also try shooting through a $3 magnifying glass – it works better than you’d think.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of photopete
DSC_9178
courtesy of photopete

Who doesn’t love a parade? This weekend saw two separate parades through our city – one for the Cherry Blossom Festival, one for Emancipation Day – and our Flickr Pool was awash with the parade imagery. This shot from yesterday’s Emancipation Day parade by Pete Kuszmaul captured the balance between joy and professionalism in a parade and this young cheerleader has it perfectly balanced. 

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of Joe in DC
F Street
courtesy of Joe in DC

A nice street-scape, where the very people walking along are part of the scenery. This shot, done by Joe, is something that we all see everyday. It just takes someone to take the picture for us to stop and notice the beauty. Take that moment now and look: the light is soft and low in the sky, casting long, expressive shadows. The people and cars are arrayed in a random pattern which fills the shot just right. And the picture is wide enough that you can see the lines of the brick sidewalk; a sidewalk made of multiple different colored bricks. Most definitely a photo worth seeing.

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Featured Photo

adjourned
adjourned
courtesy of theupper

Sometimes the best thing to take a picture of is the space around the main object. This concept is called negative space. Take theupper’s picture above: the perfect silhouette of the Capitol Dome and the Statue of Freedom is framed wonderfully by the sky. The streaks of clouds, hinted with the pink of sunset or sunrise, complement the multiple blues of the sky. An all around excellent shot.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of theqspeaks
FDR Room Four
courtesy of theqspeaks

One of the benefits of doing a long exposure is that you are able to capture motion in a still photograph. Think about that for a moment; it sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t? But then you have pictures like the one above from theqspeaks, which is of one of the more dramatic fountains in the FDR Memorial along the Tidal Basin. The water is both frozen and moving within this two second exposure, giving a new perspective on the fountain, splashes and all. As well, the blacks of the rocks contrast well against the white of the water. All around an excellent photo!

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of TheRobbStory
U Street/Cardozo Metro
courtesy of TheRobbStory

The brutalist architecture of Metro stations; there really aren’t any better examples of the style in the city. TheRobbStory does a great job of capturing the angular features of the station’s vault, and the vanishing point at the end of the platform adds a pinch of mystery. And for an added, modern touch, the curving lines of the escalator compliments everything. I bet you’ll notice all this the next time you’re in a Metro station.

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of ekelly80
bailey’s cupcake
courtesy of ekelly80

This photo just made me smile. With Saint Paddy’s Day coming up next week, the sight of this perfectly made cupcake, and the green shoes, put me in the mood of the season. On an artistic level, this is a perspective that we all know well; who hasn’t taken a look at their yummy sweet just before devouring it? But Erin invested in some self-control and took the time to capture this perfect, Irish sight. May the luck of the Irish be with you all!

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of rpmaxwell
Communion
courtesy of rpmaxwell

Black and white photography forgoes the visual brilliance of color to focus more on composition. Ryan demonstrates this to great effect in the picture above. Rather than getting distracted by the colors around the individual, the viewer is pulled right into the communion of the man and his phone. With only his face lit by the glow of the phone’s screen, we get to see his face while the rest of his body is enveloped by the uniform black of his hoodie. Add in his Mona Lisa-esque expression and get to guess what it means; is he happy or angry at what he sees on his LCD screen? Or is it something else? Perfectly composed for us to see whatever we want to see.

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of vpickering
Woodrow Wilson bridge
courtesy of vpickering

With the reflective surface of the Potomac, Victoria was able to get the colors of the Wilson Bridge’s lights in the river. And since it’s a long exposure, the movement of the Potomac gives the reflection a fascinating blurred look which draws the eye upward to the structure; all those vertical lines in the water point to the horizontal line of the bridge. Truly a fascinating shot, of a relatively simple form.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of cruffo
Portal to Virginia
courtesy of cruffo

Metro shots are always fun. The bright, colorful lights, combined with the blacks of the shadows, go together so well. Cruffo’s shot is unique because of the lens flare, a refraction of light in the lens of the camera which shows up in the image as multiple blue circles. Sometimes these flares can ruin a picture; other times they add a bit of wonder to an ordinary photo. This one is definitely a benefit, with the added bonus of adding color to the image. Quite the shot!

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of pablo.raw
Wisdom
courtesy of pablo.raw

I decided to do something completely different for the Featured Photo segment today. What you see above is called a sterographic projection, or polar panorama. By using a photo editing program, like Photoshop, a photographer can take a regular, 360 degree panoramic photo and turn it into a little planet. If you have the skill to do it, you can make some fascinating photographs.

Pablo creates a unique world here of a statue in the National Gallery of Art. It’s as if the goddess Gaia has been born from Khaos and looks on the blank slate of a world that she is about to give form.

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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of Paul Frederiksen
Going Home
courtesy of Paul Frederiksen

A good long exposure makes for a great picture. And if you take the shot in the right light, it can become magical. Take Paul’s long exposure of traffic along the George Washington Parkway. We see traffic coming and going; the white of the oncoming lights and the red of the receding ones. But in addition to the artificial light, there’s the wonderful purple and oranges of the evening sky. Such a mixed lighting situation can be difficult to capture in a photo, because the lights of the traffic are not as bright as the light of the sky. But Paul used a neutral density filter, which reduced the overall light of the scene and allowed him to keep the lens open longer. Thus those near perfect lines of traffic and a gorgeous sky. Well done!

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of Mondmann
Attack From Above
courtesy of Mondmann

And now for something completely different. Forced Perspective is a technique which can create some fun shots. By manipulating our perception of scale and perspective, it creates an optical allusion that objects are larger or smaller than they actually are, are at least in comparison to other objects. You’ve probably seen pictures of your friends pushing over the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or yourself laid a big kiss on the Sphinx, or seen a tourist touch the point of the Washington Monument. There are many ways of pulling it off. Mondmann goes an interesting route with his forced perspective shot: catching some tourists at the Marine Corp Museum in the line of fire of a WWI tail gunner…or so it seems, from a certain point of view.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of Glyn Lowe Photos
Whole Foods Market.. – (Explored)
courtesy of Glyn Lowe Photos

Yeah, it’s a picture of a supermarket. But take a moment and look at the shot. It’s hard to realize but a lot of time, thought, and money went into designing this facade (and similar corporate architecture). We’re just bombarded by so much of it, that it’s hard to notice when the simple beauty of the view. Glyn Lowe gives us a view where we see all of the lines, from the window panes to the sign to the U-shaped cart barriers, moving in the same direction. And then there is the mix of colors. Reds, yellows, oranges, and then the green of the Whole Foods sign. A simple, yet satisfying, urban shot; gotta love it!

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of flipperman75
Sky on Fire
courtesy of flipperman75

Did you see that sunset we had last Tuesday? It was simply breathtaking. And flipperman75 got a great shot of it. Not only did he get the fiery colors of the setting sun, but he also got an amazing angle of part of the city’s skyline. Getting both the Washington Monument and the Old Post Office Building, along with the puff of steam, gives the shot a wonderful amount of scale. A beautiful shot for a beautiful sunset.

Featured Photo, Weekend Flashback
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Best Of: Photos 2011

Photo courtesy of pablo.raw
January moonrise II
courtesy of pablo.raw

Four days left in 2011. It has been a doozy of a year: government shutdowns, and people exercising their right to protest. Evil men dying, and squeal worthy, cute animals. Big events; personal milestones; and sad farewells. And throughout the year, our contributors to the We Love DC Flickr pool have kept the photos coming. While none are Pulitzer-prize winning pictures (despite their excellent quality), they do mark the passage of time here in our home city.

We decided to do a “year in review” of photographs for 2011. The majority are shots from the pool, with a few special ones sprinkled here and there for big events (or cute animals). I hope you’ll take a few minutes and look through them all, and think back on the year. And let’s make a resolution to keep the top-notch photos coming in for 2012! Or better still, you’ll start contributing photos in the New Year… Continue reading →