Washington DC

 For my last trip to the East coast I went early so I could spend some time photographing DC and some of the surrounding area. I thought I had shared the images from last time I was in DC taking pictures, but I don't see a blog entry. Well, I went to see the air and space museum and took a few pictures of the monuments on the Washington National Mall. You can see my efforts from 2015 here.

They should light up Lincoln earlier in the day, before the sun is all set

 This time I wanted to see more and I brought a tripod! This allowed me to take pictures later into the night and try out High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. The basic idea is to take several pictures of the same subject and then use a computer program to overlay them to create a new image. For each of the individual pictures you chose a different exposure setting on your camera.

View of the Capitol from the Washington Momument

 My camera has the option to set three brackets. The fist picture is dark and under exposed, but you can see details in the bright areas. The second picture has good exposure but detail in the shadows and in bright areas is lost. The final picture is over exposed with glaring bright areas, but detail visible in the dark areas. An HDR program takes these images and combines them in such a fashion that the detail from all images is preserved.

 The reason this is desirable is because the human eye has a much bigger seeing range than even very good digital cameras. For example, the best picture I took last month during the total solar eclipse is an HDR of three images. Even though it shows a lot of detail, humans looking at the sun at that moment were able to see much more in the darkness surrounding the halo of the sun.
 Because it was getting dark in DC, the dark images of my set had quite long exposure times which leads to some strange effects in addition to those that HDR introduces. (Look at the flags in the picture above.) Nevertheless, I'm happy with how these pictures turned out. The program I used to process my HDR images is called Photomatix.

Drummers on Adams Morgan Day

 In the afternoon, before I took my nighttime HDR pictures I went to the Adams Morgan neighborhood in DC. They had their annual festival along 18th street with lots of music, food, and interesting characters out in the street.

The embassy of Panama

 It was so popular that I had to park quite a bit away, in the embassy district among secluded and fancy houses. I didn't stay long because it was hot and a little too crowded for me, so I headed into the Georgetown area. According to this page there are 17 things to do and see there. I didn't have enough time for all of them, but did spend some time walking around and taking pictures.

 

  Off in the side streets, even on a busy nice warm day, it is quiet enough to enjoy the scenery and take some cityscape pictures.

 At the bottom of the hill is the Potomac river and the Georgtown Waterfront Park. That was crowded, but for good reason. It is nice down there. Lots to see and do.

 I spent quite a bit of time there before it was time to head over to the Mall and get set up for my HDR photography at sunset.

 The next day I wanted to see something else. Unfortunately, the weather had turned bleak. I did cross the Chesapeake Bay bridge to spent some time in Terrapin Beach Park on Kent Island. I had hoped to catch the sunset behind the bridge. The Photographer's Ephemeris had told me that I was at the right time in the right spot, but the weather just did not cooperate. DC was getting some of the clouds and moisture that Irma had unleashed over the Caribbeans and Florida in the days before.

 That bay bridge was also disappointing.  It is nice and long, spanning the four-mile gap between the mainland and Kent island, but it is quite ugly. It looks like it was constructed piece by piece. Whenever they had some more money, they went and bought another span and tacked it onto the bridge. Nothing matches.

 While that day was kind of disappointing,  I'm happy with the trip overall and the pictures I got while in DC. You can see all my pictures I took on this trip here.

Big John

 

 Sometimes you get a song into your head and just can't shake it for a while. For some reason, Big Bad John did this to me the other day. So I googled it and just like last time I researched a song, I learned a bunch.

These goats are hard to photograph because their faces are so dark

 I'll let you read the Wikipedia entry; it lead me to three more songs. My Big John by Dottie West, and then The Cajun Queen and Little Bitty Big John by Jimmy Dean again. Listen to the four songs in this order to get the whole story of Big John. It's fun!
 By the way, the photos in this post have nothing to do with the content. I took them earlier in the year on a hike in Switzerland. All my posts show some of my pictures, and just text on a web site would have to be more compelling than what I write, to be interesting without illustrations.

A train down in the Mattertal

 I used to tell people that I had come to the USA because of country music. Growing up in Switzerland we basically had three government-run radio stations that tried to cover all interests and provide the information the population needed to make informed decisions in elections and when voting on new laws or rejecting existing ones.
 While American rock and pop music could be heard all day long, only on Tuesday nights between ten and midnight could you listen to American Country. I found that unfair and came to the US to get more of it ;-)

Clinging to live on a rock. Click on it to see it up close

 One thing I liked about country music was that I could often understand what they were singing. Even today, with much better English, I often don't understand what people are saying in rock and pop songs. Also, many country songs tell a story. Like that of Big John. He was so big, it took four songs to cover it all.
I got turned off to country during the Bush years when the Dixie Chicks were banned from country stations and their CDs burned for speaking out against the Iraq war. So much for freedom and free speech.

My antidepressant when politics and live get to me

 But once in a while I'm drawn back to my old fondness as happened the other day with Big John. Of course, during my search I came across other old favorites I had long forgotten like Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley.

These are rare

Or, maybe it is this one. I forget. Need to ask Stef again.

 If you listen to these songs on repeat for several hours in a row, they start losing some of their appeal and your brain becomes free to think about something else again.
 Or not. One more time and then back to Iko Iko...