Photo mockery

As I do most weekend mornings, I went shooting at dawn Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning, my goal was to get the Lincoln Memorial shooting across the Memorial Bridge, as that was almost perfectly in line with where the sun was coming up. And I did that, and it turned out ok. I liked a couple of the shots, but the best shots were actually taken when I was walking along the bike path to get to the bridge. Here's my favorite of those.



Somewhat of a side note, but I wanted to note that the Memorial Bridge pretty much rots for shooting. In particular, the street lights are fairly problematic. My best shots were all taken while standing in the road, because of that. And I wanted to shoot from the end of the bridge, but it has a bit too much arch for that to work well. Plus, there's no place nearby to park; you're looking at a fairly long walk unless you want to pay to park at Arlington National Cemetery (when it's open).

Anyway, on Sunday I went down to Old Town Alexandria (where I used to live, incidentally), to get the sunrise with the Masonic temple in the shot. From looking online, it appeared that I could shoot from behind and to the side of it, and be looking in roughly the right direction for the sunrise. And the land sloped up, going from King St to Duke St (which I knew from going down there previously). What I hadn't noticed was that it was still significantly lower than the temple. So I took a bunch of shots to try to make it look good, but it was pretty much a failure. I think the temple was mocking me.

Here's the only shot I was reasonably happy with, that was taken in entirely the wrong direction to get the sunrise.



I think what I'm going to try to do is go there again, but at sunset, this time. The direction will be better; plus, I'll take it from the platform of the Metro stop, so it'll be a pretty unobstructed view. I'll also have to try to get a shot at night, when it's lit up. Not sure when I'll be able to give that a go, but I hope it's pretty soon. Complicating that, of course, is that it needs to be a clear night.