Glen Echo Park is a neat place located on MacArthur Blvd, near Washington, DC. It used to be a full fledged amusement park in the early part of the 20th century, with its own rail line that ran to the park’s gate from downtown DC. Ligia and I visited it a few times in 2008. The following are a few photos I took during those visits.
The park’s official website is here.
The National Park Service now runs the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, located along the banks of the Anacostia River. The park was built by the Shaw and Fowler families, who knew the value of preserving wetlands long before the government caught onto it. In it, they preserved waterlilies and lotus flowers, and kept pristine the original tidal marsh — now the only remaining tidal marsh in Washington, DC.
The park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna once native to the area, but since destroyed by deforestation and development. It houses hundreds of species of birds, animals, flowers and plants.
In the 1900s, the wetlands in the area had been destroyed, because they were thought to be worthless, and by the 1990s, the Anacostia River had silted in, making it quite clear that the wetlands at least played a role in preventing that. So the local government worked with various agencies to dredge the river and rebuild the wetlands, some of which abut the Kenilworth Gardens.
Walter Shaw, a Civil War veteran, purchased the original plot of land in the 1880s, started planting waterlilies, then added more species over the years. In 1912, he opened it to the public. In 1921, when he died, his daughter, Helen Shaw Fowler, took over the park. By this time, the Anacostia River had begun to silt in, so the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to dredge it, and this endangered the park. Mrs. Fowler fought to keep it open, until Congress approved the purchase of the gardens for $15,000 in 1938 in order to preserve it.
Over time, more adjacent lands were added to the park. Now its total area is over 700 acres. One such stage took place in 1992-1993, when 32 acres of mudflats were restored to tidal marshes and added to the park’s domain.
This post is part of a series on Walt Disney World. Click on each link to access Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
There’s a ride called the Backlot Tour at Disney MGM Studios. At first sight, it seems like nothing fancy: just a tour bus that takes you around various places. But if you assume that and never go on it, you miss out on a whole lot of fun.
The Backlot Tour is actually made up of three segments: a pre-ride special effects show (with audience participation), the actual tour in the buses, and a very nice post-tour walk through the on-site AFI (American Film Institute) Museum, which is packed full of actual movie props and costumes.
The special effects show involves mock action sequences from Pearl Harbor, and the audience is shown how stunts like the ones in the movie were created. You also get a sense of the scale of those special effects, and of the incredible effort and planning that went into creating each action scene, even if it lasted only a few seconds.
The backlot tour gives the visitors behind-the-scenes glimpses at the work that goes on at the studio, which is supposedly in use for various movies from time to time. As the tour guide speaks, the bus snakes its way among various cars and objects used in past and recent movies.
There are rare gems, like Walt Disney’s personal plane. He used it to fly over the Florida Everglades when he surveyed the land he would later purchase for Disney World. Toward the end of the tour, you’ll be taken through the costume department. There’s a tunnel built right through the building where the staff works on costumes, and large windows line it. You’ll be able to look right in and see them at work on the various costumes worn by WDW cast members.
You’ll get an unexpected shock as you experience a fire and water stunt at a specially-designed canyon. Tens of thousands of gallons of water will rush past you. It’s quite a sight to see!
But what I thought was really interesting was the AFI Museum, available at the end of the tour. There was no time limit, and we could look at the various movie props and costumes as long as we wanted. It was a treat!
This post is a continuation of my series on Walt Disney World.
Lights, Motors, Action! is one of the shows at Disney MGM Studios. It runs only a few times a day, and it involves tightly coreographed action and stunt sequences with cars and motorcycles. The setup is that they’re filming scenes for an upcoming action movie. The truth is, they’re just trying to involve the audience a little more. I have mixed feelings about making everything seem like the movies, but I can certainly agree with this: the show and the stunts are great!
The set is built to resemble a small, Southern French town.
There’s an introduction, where the audience is told what to expect, then the stunts begin, with little breaks to allow the crew to set up the various scenes.
I understand the stunt drivers go through a set of tires in three days, and since the show began, they’ve worn down the pavement on the set by several inches, and it will need to be repaved. There’s also a surprise: you’ll get to see Herbie during the show!
Our recent trip to WDW was also an attempt to document the place and our experiences through serious photography, and it was a worthwhile learning experience. Some questions that I asked myself as I set out to do this were:
I thought I was prepared in terms of equipment. I had an anti-glare hood, an external flash, a tripod, an extra camera battery and the charger, extra memory cards and a lens-cleaning kit, not to mention a great camera case. The second question was a bit harder to answer, but things worked out okay because I relied on the following guidelines. I listed them below in no particular order, as they occurred to me:
So what did I learn on this trip? Well, I learned that you can never take too many photos, especially with a digital camera, where you can easily delete what you don’t want. It pays to be well stocked with memory cards. And it really pays to have a camera that can take many shots on a single charge. My camera, currently a Panasonic Lumix FZ20K, goes (or it did anyway — more on that later) through a battery charge at 250 shots, give or take a few. Even though I had a spare battery with me, I still found myself running out of juice. It also pays to have a camera that can take photos at 400, 800 and 1,600 ISO without significant noise. There were so many beautiful shots I missed because my camera could only take shots up to 200 ISO without noise, and it could only go up to 400 ISO, period. When the lights turned on at the parks, everything was more beautiful, but my camera couldn’t capture it because I would have needed to set up my tripod for every shot. That’s a bit hard to do with throngs of people around you.I also learned that my external flash and glare hood were worth purchasing. My external flash helped me immensely with people shots at night, and even with large-scale illumination of buildings and walls. The glare hood was definitely useful during the day, especially when the sun came out from behind the clouds. I counted my blessings when I discovered I could tie my camera bag around my waist instead of carrying it around my shoulders. It was immensely helpful to have easy access to my accessories as I held the camera in my hands.
It cost me nothing to throw my lens-cleaning kit in my bag alongside my camera, and it paid off tremendously during my visit. My camera’s lens got pretty dirty during heavy use. I either touched the lens inadvertently as I fiddled with the lens cap, or the camera got splashed by water drops from fountains and various rides as I took photos. I had someone sneeze right as they passed me and my camera… Regardless of what happened, having the lens cleaning solution right there was a huge help. I just sat down on a bench, squirted a drop or two of the solution onto the lens, and wiped it with the special cloth. In about a minute, I was back in business with squeaky-clean lens, ready to take more great photos. When you take event photos, and you’re only there for 1-2 hours or so, you can always go back home or to the hotel to do some maintenance work on the camera (clean the lens, wipe the body a bit, charge the batteries, etc.) When you’re out in the field the whole day, things are a little bit different (and harder). That’s why it pays to be well-prepared.
A little bit about my camera. I used a Panasonic Lumix FZ20K on this trip. I purchased it back in October, as I decided to move up to a bigger camera from my current compact digital, a Kodak EasyShare Dual Lens v610. I’ve always been a fan of small cameras that I can tuck away in my pocket and carry anywhere, but as I got more serious about photography, I found myself always bumping against the various limitations of my cameras and getting frustrated. Still, I couldn’t justify getting a bigger camera, because of two reasons: price, and more importantly, portability. I didn’t want to lug around a camera case all the time.
I got the FZ20 as a stepping stone. I wanted to see if I’d be happier with a bigger camera that wasn’t as limited as my compact, and if I could handle carrying around a case on my trips. Things turned out well. I liked it, and I was happy with the quality of the photos it took as well. I didn’t mind carrying around the camera case, and enjoyed being able to pick from a variety of accessories as needed. I looked forward to using the FZ20 for another 6 months or so, then transitioning to a DSLR. Unfortunately, the FZ20 started malfunctioning during this trip. The zoom stopped working properly, and didn’t respond when I needed to bring it back to wide from tele shots. I’d have to turn the camera off, then back on. It wasn’t fun, and after only a couple of months of use, I was disappointed to see it malfunction. Thankfully, I’d purchased it from Costco, which has an amazing return policy. Other than computers and laptops, you can return merchandise at any time. That’s fantastic! I ended up returning it yesterday, and now I’m back to my Kodak v610, which still works great, but has certain frustrating limitations and no image stabilization. 😦
I’m now saving up for a DSLR. I don’t want to buy an entry-level DSLR, because I know I’m going to be frustrated with its limitations sooner or later. I’d rather get a full-featured model that will cost more but provide me with the features and quality I need. While I was at WDW, I noticed that most of the photographers at Disney (the ones that offered to take portraits) were equipped with Nikon D70s, but those are already more than 2 years old. I’m looking at the Canon EOS 5D and Nikon D200.
I’ll post some of the photos from Walt Disney World this week or next week. There are a lot of them and I need to do some post-processing work to get them ready.
Raoul Pop 