Meteorological winter ends Saturday. Too bad no one has told actual winter, which continues on unabated, with the coldest temperatures we’ve seen in decades.
Even winter has an upside though: snow. While we haven’t gotten a lot of snow, we’ve had some pretty storms, like the photo above. Low clouds, ground covered in white, flakes swirling through the streets give this urban scene a slightly mysterious quality. It’s an iPhone pic, from Scott Circle in Washington, DC. I’m up a couple of steps, standing on the Hahnemann Monument, to better capture the scene.
14th Street NW in Washington is one of the hottest corridors in the country. This once beat-up strip lined with auto repair joints is being transformed into blocks of condos, micro-apartments, restaurants and high-end retail. Very high-end.
This is one of the construction cranes that Mayor Gray touts as proof of the city’s growth. He’s right – this crane is building a set of $500,000 condos on the site of an old parking lot. There used to be empty lots on 14th Street and boarded-up buildings. They’re just about gone now, the march of construction cranes marking their disappearance.
This was the first full work week after the holidays, and an incredibly long one featuring epic cold and a Friday ice storm. My mood was captured by this photo of Red Line commuters braving freezing rain. I’ve never been so happy to see a week end.
“Find a city
Find myself a city to live in.”
Cities, The Talking Heads
In 2013, I didn’t travel to anywhere exotic. I didn’t have any great adventures. I didn’t experience anything particularly unique.
But I was in a city – adventure came to me. Photowalks, film festivals, performance art, burlesque, comedy, music and biking all could be found in Washington, DC, the city I have a love/hate relationship with. I experienced as much as I could, capturing every moment with my iPhone or DSLR. Here are my favorite photos from the year, featuring bikes, beer and the arts.
Fun with Flickr
I have really mixed feelings about Instagram. While it’s a great social network, I hate how it shrinks pics down to little squares. I was glad to use the upgraded Flickr mobile app, which provides all sorts of adjustments and filters for iPhoneographers (my favorite filter? Brooklyn).
Christmas in Florida is not always warm. I remember years with freeze warnings and rumors of snow. But when it’s nice, it’s really nice – Florida in December can be incredibly pleasant.
I’m fortunate that my parents live in Orlando. On my way home, I detoured off I-95 and cruised down AIA. I saw these condos from the road and had to stop. I walked down to the beach to get this iPhone shot. The long shadows and the soft afternoon light underscores the beauty and symmetry of these buildings. Living there must be a dream – it certainly looks like one.
The ability to easily embed photos on a web site is one of those things you just kinda expect these days. You expect to be provided a bit of code to copy and paste into a site. Yet, until recently, Flickr didn’t provide an easy embed tool.
Not that using Flickr photos on a WordPress site was difficult before – you selected a size, copied the code, added a caption, linked to the photo and voila! It was a multi-step process, but not a difficult one.
Flickr has made this easier with Flickr Web Embeds. It’s slightly easier than the old method but I don’t entirely like it – since it’s an embed, you can’t put a caption under it. And when I created this post yesterday, the photo had a white Flickr label on it, which has since disappeared.
Hopefully, this is just the start and Flickr will offer the ability to tweak and customize embeds.
And above that’s 10th St NW, near the new City Center development. Formerly home to the Washington Convention Center and then a parking lot, it’s the first time this street has been open in decades. I liked the bike lane. It’s an iPhone photo, edited in the Flickr mobile app.
DC is a land of tribes. “Where do you work?” is the first question that you hear at a Washington party. It’s an attempt to discover your tribal affiliation – are you Government, Lawyer, Liberal, Nonprofit, Corporate or Something Else? The purpose is to determine whether you are friend or foe, superior or inferior.
It’s a silly practice based upon the assumption that people are defined by their jobs. But work is not a passion for most people. Most of us are defined by our interests, rather than our jobs.
Case in point: The Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA). At last night’s Holiday Party at the Bier Baron, I met an incredibly diverse group of people. They were young, old, women, men, gay, straight – one of the most eclectic gatherings you’ll find in self-sorting DC. They included everyone from government employees living in the suburbs to entrepreneurs working in the city.
And they weren’t interested in what you did for a living. Instead, the talk was of winter cycling tights and the best bike route to Silver Spring. “How many bikes do you own?” was a popular question. With just two bikes, I was an outlier among the avid cyclists.
New bike lanes and the advent of Capital Bikeshare has led to an explosion of cycling in DC. In the crowded 15th St Cycletrack, you see scores of bikers every morning – women in dresses (yes, even in this weather), hard-core commuters and elderly tourists on red Bikeshare bikes.
Which is why I’m glad to be a WABA member. It’s not just the sexy legs. It’s that cycling is a shared experience that bridges communities across the city. I’m a WABA member because biking in DC is fun.
I live in DC, take photos in DC, know lots of DC photographers, even won a FotoWeekDC contest but I cannot make heads or tails of the FotoWeekDC web site. There’s an overwhelming number of events – gallery openings, workshops (mostly paid), talks, lectures, training and other activities – but without an easy way to sort and find interesting stuff to see.
People have asked me what they should see during FotoWeek. I have no idea. I’m sure there’s lots of good stuff but I can’t figure out the web site.
But I can recommend FotoNOMA: The District Experience. Admission is only $5 and includes photos from Strata Collective, Instant DC, The Pulitzer Center, International League of Conservation Photographers(ILCP), American Photographic Artists (APADC), Silvercore Photographers, Critical Exposure, Washington School of Photography, Galerie Blue Square, Indie Photobook Library, Empty Stretch and Women Photojournalists of Washington (WPOW).
The Strata Collective includes many of my favorite DC photographers such as Joshua Yospyn and Matt Dunn. They are experts at catching the absurdities of urban life. Many of their photos will be familiar to you, if you read the City Paper or local blogs.
I’m also friends with the folks behind InstantDC. Founded by James Campbell, the group has expanded my idea of the possibilities of mobile photography, from cutting-edge tools to different ways of seeing the world.
The International League of Conservation Photographers is also represented at FotoNOMA. They’re a great group of incredibly talented photographers who use their National Geographic-level skills to further environmental conservation.
FotoNOMA: The District Experience runs through November 10. The exhibit is just a couple blocks from the New York Avenue Metro. A whole new neighborhood is going up there. Check it out.
“The journey is its own reward” should be the slogan of the Coffeeneuring Challenge. It’s not the coffee you drink, but how you get there.
That was my consolation after drinking this.
A bowl of hot milk – enjoy!
It was supposed to be a cappuccino, from Quartermaine’s in Bethesda. It was more like hot milk in a bowl with a dollop of espresso. I’d been so spoiled on my previous coffeeneuring adventures to Dolcezza and Buzz Bakery that this mediocre concoction was a shock.
I needed to return to DC, where cappuccino was made by surly men with beards. So I gulped this down and headed back to the Capital Crescent Trail. It’s my favorite trail in the Washington area and the one I ride the most. The CCT follows an old railway line from Georgetown to Bethesda, with a gentle uphill grade most of the way. Scenic year-round, it had exploded with fall colors over the weekend.
There’s actually a speed limit on the CCT – 15 miles per hour. On the downhill run back to Georgetown, it’s easy to exceed the posted limit. DC hasn’t figured out how to post speed cameras on bike trails – yet.The MD section of the CCT is maintained by Montgomery County. It’s in better shape than the DC section, which is neglected by the National Park Service.The Dalecarlia Tunnel, where the CCT passes under MacArthur Boulevard.And then there’s great old railway bridge over the C&O Canal.The Sunday after the time change, and the shadows were long.For the last few miles into DC, the CCT runs parallel to the C&O Canal. This is at Fletcher’s Cove.The CCT begins in Georgetown, right under Key Bridge. The late afternoon light and the fall colors were absolutely perfect. Crazy how good iPhone pics can be with the right light.
Four coffeeneuring adventures completed – three to go! Will I complete all of my seven required trips by November 17? Will I have better luck in coffee? Stay tuned!
Dacha Beer Garden. Taken with an iPhone 5 and edited in Flickr.
Outdoor drinking in Shaw used to mean sitting on a curb with a 40. Now it’s Dacha Beer Garden, a lovely open-air spot on the corner of 7th and Q NW. Dacha features some great Oktoberfest beers, as well as the opportunity to drink out of a glass boot. Plus, they even offer free little beers to government workers impacted by the shutdown (like me). Dacha is a great place to relax with a beer and a book.
But what really makes this place unique is the iconic mural of Elizabeth Taylor. It’s eye-catching.
