W A S H I N G T O N   D . C .   -   D A Y   # 1

Monday, October 25, 2004

I walk around to the other side of the Capitol Reflecting Pool to take a closer look at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. At first take, the memorial is quite impressive and imposing. Fueled by two, larger-than-life scenes depicting a cavalry charge and a battery of artillery, both do well to elicit an emotional reaction from the viewer.

Click here for more detail and pictures of my tour of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial.

My next sight of interest is the U.S. Capitol Building, home of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. There's a high-rise crane off to the right that's feverishly working away. Its size and constantly changing position is going to make it hard to get a nice shot. There are three ways to approach this problem. The first is to visit Washington D.C. another time, after they've finished the installation of the new underground Capitol Visitor Center.

The second is to erase the crane from the photo, thus, changing reality and perhaps compromising the purity of the picture itself, as illustrated in the second picture. Yeah, right, like that really matters to me. The bottom line is it's too time consuming, I'm just too lazy.

The third and best option for me is to just avoid the crane altogether. I either hide it in the trees or make a point of cropping it out of the camera's viewfinder when I shoot the picture.