Washington Monument, Flags, 2009

This is my favorite photograph of the trip.

I had stopped by the White House and WWII Memorial and was walking past the Washington Monument when I noticed the flags in the breeze and the detail on the exterior stones. Even the shadows of visitors (wispy from movement) add to the image.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial

I had never visited the FDR Memorial. I walked there after passing the Jefferson Memorial. Not being familar with the FDR Memorial, it wasn't until I looked it up on the NPS website that I realized I entered the memorial at the exit.

Seeing the FDR memorial at night is not seeing it at its best. Certain "rooms" (four in all, one for each FDR term) are not fully lit, but other features are. One striking feature is the "final" (for me, however, the first) waterfall. It is in the "third" room, which symbolizes the WWII period. The water fall, the NPS says, is symbolic of the destruction of war, with blocks of granite chaotically strewn across the floor near the falls. I, of course, saw conveniently placed solid objects. I suppose I'll have to go back in the daylight.

Capital Building, East View, October 2009

I had not been to Washington after the construction on the visitor center completed. It has been several years since I was able to walk this close to the east side of the capital. I braced the camera on a barrier and felt fortunate to find a solid object

Capital Dome, West View, October 2009

Last month I found myself in Washington on business but the evening were free so I wandered the monuments and memorials along the national mall, with my camera, of course. I've found the national mall and the Capital Building area to be crowded - like a busy day at Disney World - during the day. At night, it was quite deserted (except for the other photographers and the Park Police).

Unfortunately, I could not find my small tripod before leaving on this trip so I had to make due with timed exposures while the camera rested on a solid object. Some of these series of photographs (this and the next four posts) obviously rest on an object. The solid object here was a park bench along a walkway on the mall side of the capital.