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.