Tag: Photography

view the Flickr photoset:
U.S. Botanic Garden, Washington, DC

For Christmas this year, I got a subscription to “Popular Photography” (thanks Jo-Jo!).

One of the first bits I read (in my premier issue) was about an awkwardly named holiday that they obviously made up the week before the issue went to print: International Shooting All the Time Day.

The general notion is that to be a better photographer, you have to take more photographs. Why this has to happen the third week of January, I will never understand, but maybe it has something to do with self sacrifice and mutilation.

Regardless, the idea behind I.S.A.t.T.D. is that you should take a picture every 5 minutes, all day long (sans 8 hours for sleep, and another hour for the uncomfortably vague “personal” time). This turns out to be 225 pictures in 24 hours.

Ignoring the fact that the whole premise is either weird, shakey, or unfathomable, I decided to give it a go. Trying desperately to keep my new year’s resolution (shoot new places) alive, I started in the northern reaches of DC’s Rock Creek Park, and worked my way down to Georgetown, and over to the National Mall.

To get a better idea of where I went, check out my new-fangled, geo-tagged Flickr map of this day’s photograph locations.

I took more than 325+ pictures in about 9 hours, though only ~130 of them were worth space on my ever-shrinking hard drive. I have until March to pick my five favorites and submit them to the magazine.

Explore the Photo Set:
International Shooting All the Time Day

The Lady Sparkler’s mom is in town, helping her pick out a wedding dress, and after dinner one night we decided to drive around a little to get the “monument at night” feel of the city.

I have shot the monuments (and FDR in particular) seemingly hundreds of times, including several times at night. I got some orginal shots, but I am decidedly reaching to get there.

Explore the Photo Set:
FDR at Night

It is hard to believe that I am saying this, but I’m getting bored shooting photographs in the greater metropolitan Washington, DC area. A cursory review of my work and I think it is safe to say I have shot every twig in the North and Central Districts of the Shenandoah National Park.

Accordingly, this year I am going to try and go shooting in some places that I have overlooked in recent years, and not just rely on heading west towards Shenandoah.

As part of this effort (a new years resolution of sorts) I went to Mount Vernon. It is #$%! pricy to get in, but nicely photogenic once you get past the ticket window. The grounds were so photogenic (and the lines to get in the house so long) that we just wandered the estate all day.

Actually, the whole this was so photogenic that we talked about getting season passes … until it was discovered that you had to get your picture taken and laminated on the ID. No amount of money saved is worth carting another photo ID around, much less one as trivial as this.

Explore the Photo Set:
Mt. Vernon, near Alexandria, Virginia