So, July, yeah...

I spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with a way to tie this post to Julius Caesar, inventor of the month of July, but drew a blank. Nothing there. Nada. 

Also, I'd written a bit of a rant about how slightly craptastic this month has been, but after reading it I deleted it. It sounded really whiny. So, instead, how about some pictures? 

These shots were taken last Saturday (July 20) during a short walk around the National Mall between dusk and dark. How do you think our cracked Washington Monument looks as it's being repaired? Not too bad, eh?

I kind of like how the scrim changes depending on your distance and the brightness of the sky. Something I'm sure the designers intended. Except for the first shot, all of these were taken off a tripod at varying ISOs, apertures and shutter speeds. For example: the picture below was shot at ISO 200, f/9 for 1 second. Gives a nice, soft texture to the flags as they wave in the first breeze D.C. had felt in oh these many days. 

While I was concentrating on what was in front of me, the thunder rolled behind me. I tried a couple of different methods to catch lightning in a bottle, so to speak, and none of them worked consistently. I went with a modified fireworks technique - shoot as many pictures as you can - and set the camera at: 200, f/2.8, 0.6 seconds. It kinda worked, but unlike with fireworks, there's really no anticipating lightning. 

Same ISO for this one, but with a shutter speed of 1.6 and an aperture of f/4. 

One of the toughest things I've found to take a picture of is the moon. Unless you catch it right on the horizon, you're not going to get any details. As this picture clearly illustrates. The flags look nice, though.

This picture inspires me to come back one of these days and catch that bad moon rising just over the level of the flags. 

This one really works for me. You get the details of the scaffolding and the scrim, but the lights give it a whole different feel. Like the monument is encased in glass or something. 

Well, that's all for now. I promised some Furlough Fotos in the last post, but a combination of factors has prevented that. Hopefully, this coming week I'll be able to kick off that feature.