Hanging on for dear life

We recently took a family “spring break” trip out to Washington D.C.  As part of a “behind the scenes” tour of the National Cathedral, I spotted this little gargoyle through a tiny window in a service door:

Hanging on for dear life

Even from just a few steps away from the door, it took 110mm of focal length (220 in full frame terms) to capture the little guy.

Honest Abe

This is a pretty simple, staple shot inside the Lincoln Memorial at night. That said, it’s a surprisingly tough shot to get…

Honest Abe

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…