Sometimes, Ligia manages to pry me away from the computer long enough to take a walk around the neighborhood. Of course, I take my camera along. This is one of the photos I took this past Thursday, during one of our dusk walks. We live in North Bethesda, MD.
This tiny little flower graced the forest floor somewhere off River Rd in Potomac, MD. Ligia and I were walking through that forest (which we love), and I was taking photos, as usual.
I’m almost done post-processing a series of photos I took during a walk through downtown Georgetown back in February. I used my new WCR (wide color range) method as I worked on them.
The day of the photo shoot, it was a blisteringly cold winter morning, and even though Ligia and I were both bundled up, we froze to our very marrow. If there’s one improvement I could suggest to the EXIF data currently stored inside photos, it’s that it also store the outside temperature, including the wind chill factor. I think that would really help put a photo in perspective. But I digress…
In spite of the cold, I had a wonderful time, taking photos left and right. Ligia, not so much. She just froze and tried to put on a happy face in spite of the cold. She’s so sweet! She was basically there for my support, because she knows photography makes me happy. We walked up and down Wisconsin Avenue, which cuts right through the heart of Georgetown and goes all the way down to the Potomac River.
Georgetown is a wonderful little neighborhood, and its quaint, colorful architecture is what sets it apart from everything else around. It has kept that spirit of the late 1800s, and most of it is still composed of beautiful little townhouses, each adjoining the other but separated from it by color and design. I’d love to be able to photograph all of it and publish all of the good photos online. Because it’s somewhat small, I think that goal is attainable in the near future.
We had a beautiful snowfall today — just gorgeous. Big, fluffy snowflakes kept coming down for what seemed like (and probably was) hours. When it was done, we had a thick, white blanket of fresh powder everywhere. Tree branches and leaves were heavy-laden with the white stuff. It clung to everything, weighing it down, bringing it closer to eye-level so we could enjoy it more. Ligia’s piano lessons were cancelled, but we couldn’t stay in. We took the MINI (which has snow tires) and went out for a drive.
We stopped at Cabin John Regional Park, which is a favorite of ours, and walked through the forest, taking photographs of everything that caught our eyes. I took my tripod along, and an umbrella that acted as a protector for the lens. Snow powder kept falling off the branches, and it wouldn’t have done to get the lens wet. Then, on a whim (but oh, what a welcome one!) we stopped for lunch at Momo Taro Sushi, inside Cabin John Mall. We had miso soup and sushi, of course: California rolls, tuna rolls and salmon rolls. They were delicious, as usual. Then we drove out some more, but it was no fun this time. The trucks had already cleared the road of snow. It’s not a lot of fun for me to drive on a clean road in winter. It’s much more exciting when there’s snow on it. That extra element of unpredictability adds extra enjoyment to an otherwise regular drive. Yes, I realize it detracts from the practicability of it all, but by gosh, I like it when things are sometimes impractical.
I tried to look away from the clean, black road to the postcard views that lined it: houses covered in a thick quilt of white snow, little picket fences barely visible, bumps where shrubs used to be, cars covered in their entirety — everything quiet, beautiful and relaxing. I’d love to find a long, winding country road that never gets plowed, and drive on it for hours, with a good camera in hand, lots of memory and plenty of battery life. I think I’d drive slowly, stop just about every minute or so, and take photos, lots of them. Gosh, I’d love to do that for a living, just go around taking photos, all day long…
We’re home now, and I’m post-processing some photos I took a while back. Now that I’m done with a pressing project of mine — that thing plagued me for more than a month — I have a little more free time and can catch up with my backlog of photos. That’s a wonderful prospect, and I look forward to it with joy.
Raoul Pop 