As I was walking across the Key Bridge from Georgetown on Wednesday night, I glanced down at the Potomac River and saw that the Kennedy Center was aglow with rainbow colors. I believe that the colors were part of the celebration of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. Honorees receive a medallion that hangs from a rainbow colored ribbon.
Most of the landmarks shown here will be familiar only to locals, but some of you may recognize the Washington Monument in the middle left in the photo. In case you are curious, I took this shot with a Canon A620 camera, an old 7.1 megapixel point-and-shoot camera that I carry with me sometimes because it fits easily into my pocket. I leaned against the railing of the bridge to take this shot in what turned out to be a one second exposure.
Although I know what the subject matter of the image is, I enjoy it equally as a kind of abstract, man-made landscape, a beautiful combination of lines and shapes and colors, with some of them reflected in the dark waters of the river.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Reflections on the past
Posted in Architecture, commentary, Inspiration, Photography, Travel, tagged Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, Washington D.C., Washington Monument on March 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »
In the orange glow of the sky, the trees cast their reflections on the black granite surface of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.
It was a moment to reflect on the names of more than 58,000 men and women whose names are inscribed on the wall. I am old enough to remember the conflicted mood of the country at the time of that war. In the late 1970’s I enlisted in the U.S. Army and served on active duty for twenty years. With that experience, I can’t help but be humbled by the memorial to the sacrifice of so many Americans for the common good.
From certain angles, I could see reflections of the Washington Monument in the wall. It proved to be very difficult, however, to capture that reflection in a photograph. I used my tripod and a long exposure, but never quite captured the feeling of the moment. I am posting one of those efforts as a kind of aspirational shot, one that I hope to shoot better in the future.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
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