Every year in December, the city of Denver turns off the street lights near the City and County building for a few “photographers’ nights” — so we can get good shots of the (somewhat gaudily) lit building.
Here’s one shot I took last night — of the building’s clock tower. More to come…
This is a pretty simple, staple shot inside the Lincoln Memorial at night. That said, it’s a surprisingly tough shot to get…
You’re not allowed to use a tripod inside the Memorial (some say it’s because the tripod legs damage the floor, others that tripods are a tripping hazard when the place is crowded). Meanwhile, the lighting is… subdued, to say the least.
I took this shot at ISO 1000 with an aperture of f/2.0 — and still, it required a one second exposure (and some noise cleanup with Topaz Denoise afterwards). Curious how to take a decent one second exposure without a tripod? It turns out that while tripods are banned in most Washington D.C. museums, monopods aren’t — not even ones with little pop-out tripod feet.
Go figure…
A few days ago, we got back from a quick family vacation to the Washington D.C. area — in part driven by the lucky acquisition of tickets to this spring’s White House garden tour. Those words probably make the thing sound more exclusive than it is in reality — it’s more like the world’s longest conga line, just you and a few thousand of your closest new friends shuffling through the White House grounds between ropes.
Still, it’s as close as most of us will ever get to the place (particularly with a camera!)…
This shot came from right in front of the White House, looking across the rose garden (just tulips in bloom…) toward the steps outside of the Oval Office. I think leaving the building out of focus and mostly out of frame gives the shot a sort of expectant look, as though a big event is about to take place. Of course, the President was out of town at the time, so only some miscellaneous staffers appeared when we were there.
One time we were wandering around in Santa Fe, primarily driven by a little window shopping. What’s a photog to do, but look around?
Luckily I thought to look down, too:
It’s pretty rare to see these sort of prisms / vault lights in New Mexico. Seattle, sure. Europe, definitely. But not in the Southwest…
Some hand-/foot-holds on a smokestack of the Battleship Texas:
I liked the geometry of this shot, with the eclectic mix of regular, repeating elements with odd jumbled patches. It took a bit of work in PS Elements to get this lined up (since I took the shot from below, there were significant skews to remove for this view).
For those of you that don’t follow the space program in the U.S., this is always a sad time of year in and around NASA. January 27 is the anniversary of the 1967 Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in a pre-launch test. January 28 is the anniversary of the 1986 loss of the shuttle Challenger in a launch explosion. Tomorrow, February 1 is the seventh anniversary of the shuttle Columbia’s loss during re-entry.
All in all, a rough week of the calendar for crewed space flight.
This is the foundation of Cape Canaveral’s Pad 34, site of the Apollo 1 fire. The steel structure was removed years ago (these things decay quickly in Florida’s environment), but the concrete base has been left in place as a monument to the astronauts’ sacrifices.
A memorial plaque was installed on one side of the structure, and when I visited, saw some remains of flowers that people have left at the site. It’s a tricky thing to get to, though — although if you’re lucky, you can occasionally get to it on a tour of the historic launch pads.
On a trip back to New Mexico, we managed to stay a night and a day in Santa Fe. After the pup was in bed, Mrs. Argos wanted a little “me time,” so I grabbed my gear and headed downtown for some night shots. I thought this play of light and shadow was interesting:
The contrast in geometry between the shadow lines and the joints between the sidewalk pavers is kind of neat too. FWIW, I did very little to this shot other than crop it a bit and desaturate it (although not completely).
Originally posted to the old blog on October 23, 2009; on Flickr over here.
