NATIONAL MALL, MOSTLY

I thought I would wind up the posts on our brief trip to Washington, DC with some general shots around the District.

First is a shot from a conference room at our daughter's law firm's offices.

That's right.  The White House is only a couple of blocks south of her offices, making for a great backdrop to conferences.

Following a brief tour of her offices, we did pay a visit to the area at the back of the White House . . .

where we got interviewed by Swedish Public Television, who wanted to know our opinion of the Nobel prize award process--as if we knew anything intelligent.  It is amazing how glib you can be when you think your comments will never be seen or heard by anyone you know (at least, that's my hope).

Earlier I took a shot of a flag reflected in a nearby building.

This was a spur-of-the-moment shot.  I liked the simplicity of the composition and the fact that the flag reflections are slightly different in the different glass panes.  I do wish I had taken a wider shot that would have included the building's stone panels above the windows shown, rather than having the upper windows cut off.  Still, not bad.

On Sunday afternoon we found ourselves walking west along the reflecting pool leading toward the Lincoln Memorial and I took a few shots of the trees reflected in the water.  Here is one of the shots.

I chose to put the edge of the pool in the center of the image.  In reviewing the photo, I decided I liked best the portions nearer the edge of the pool showing the remnants of fall color and decided to crop the shot to exclude the top of the trees but to emphasize the center portion.  Here is the result.

And here is a shot closer to the Lincoln Memorial.

I think I was being lazy at this point, as I could have positioned the camera closer to the edge of the pool to eliminate the low wall in the lower left corner of the image and included more of the Lincoln Memorial  along with its reflection.

Earlier in the day I took a few shots of the mall area before the earlier morning fog had dissipated and the crowds had arrived.

I liked this shot even though the objects in the lower center of the image appear to be trash containers.  

And then I noticed a small tree positioned in front of the Washington Monument and took a few shots.  Here is one of those.

This shot cut off the upper portion of the monument, but I didn't really mind that--everyone knows what it looks like.  I also thought the fog helped the shot.  I decided to take a second, wider angled shot that included the entire monument.

I decided to place the monument on the left to include the stand of trees on the right.  Those trees, I thought, added a lot to the composition, as did the small tree on the left.  In addition, even though there were not a lot of individuals in these shots, they helped a lot in providing perspective.  Of the 300 photos I took during this brief trip to Washington, this last was the shot I liked the best.

Taken with my Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 lens.