A LITTLE WASHINGTON D.C. ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL

During our visit last weekend to Washington DC to see our daughter Michelle and her boyfriend, we stayed in the DuPont Circle neighborhood, and I managed to get a few shots of some of the local architectural detail that adds to the city's charm.

Here, first, are a couple of photos of the exterior red sandstone of the charming little apartment where we stayed.

For whatever reason, I liked that the wrought iron railing was curving to the right.

The aperture for this second shot was f/8, which seemed to provide plenty of effective depth of field despite how close I was.

I struggled with the following shot.  I was drawn to the green-tinted "face," but I didn't want to present it by itself without any context.  On the other hand, if I included too much of the surrounding scene, I risked having the face get lost.  Besides, the surroundings just weren't that interesting.

Here are a couple of detail shots that I converted to black & whites to emphasize the lines.

It continues to amaze me that this sort of detail, which never occurs in contemporary construction was so commonplace 120 years ago.

There are a number of embassies located in the DuPont Circle area, and in the small courtyard for the Zimbabwe embassy I spied the following sculpture.

The sculpture was larger, of course, but I thought this stylized face represented the heart of the work. There is enough texture in the color of the stone that I thought it worked better as a color shot rather than a black & white.

My favorite of the detail shots was this simple one of the front steps of a neighborhood apartment building.

Although the shot is a bit "simple," I liked its combination of stonework detail and slightly dilapidated steps.  I also liked the subtle and natural lavender and ecru in the coloration of the stone.  This also was shot at f/8.

Finally, there was this novelty shot.

Not beautiful but interesting.

John