Earlier this evening we went for a walk to shake off all the red wine we drank in prior few hours and this is what I saw right outside of my house. It was a pretty sight. We walked for a good hour in the neighborhood and didn’t see any other streets as cool looking as our own. I was very surprisingly pleased with all of our neighbors for doing this, pretty cool to see it on a cool night right outside of my house.
Chevy Chase area in DC is probably one of the most expensive and snoopy areas in DC. Well, truly, most of DC is very expensive, so saying that this area is most expensive is probably highly debatable, but nerveless based on my observation of the shops around there it is not one of the cheapest ones. In December I stayed for a few nights at hotel near the Friendship Heights metro station. When you walk from hotel to the metro station you’d see all of these fancy designer brand name stores. Usually some type of security car would be idling on the corner. I never saw any people going in or out. I always wondered how these places stay in business. Is there really that many people going buying super expensive jewelry, leather bags, shoes and dresses to pay their salaries and I’m pretty sure not so cheap rental? I read somewhere about Chinese malls and all designer shops in those malls. They are empty. No one goes there because no one can afford to shop there. How do they stay in business? Supposedly they pay their rent on the amount of actual sales or something like that. So those stores don’t have to make any money to cover their rental, but they would have presence at the mall – advertisement for the designer brand and prestige for the mall. I kind of question the same business practice in US.
Any one knows how these places stay in business?
When opportunities arise I always try to get photos with long traffic lights and I find that it is not easy to do if you shoot a set of brackets. I usually shoot with ISO 200, so when shooting brackets camera is set to aperture priority and the primary way to control timing of each exposure is via changing aperture, the lower the aperture (higher F number) the longer each exposure takes. But you don’t really know how long it will take for each exposure, while interesting traffic is going by and might not show up again for some time. I usually do not like to bring F too high because it decreases the quality of the image, so it is hard to time it right and get enough timing to get the good continuous line of lights at least on one of the brackets.
So on this occasion I was walking along the Niagara parkway on the river side and decided to take a few traffic lights with some glimpse of the Niagara Falls, the fog and some Christmas decorations, so I jumped over to the medium and took probably at least ten shots of the same scene, trying to time it right. I was happy with this one.
BTW, if you are a recent visitor – a little tip – if you want to see much higher resolution image all you have to do is to click on the image below. And as always – Thanks for stopping by!
This photo was taken couple days before Christmas. We arrived in Pittsburgh on a rainy night and went straight to the Mt Washington to take a few photos of the downtown. You might recall one of the previous photos I took that night, it was posted here couple month back. In the foreground you can see the Mt Washington Incline, it takes you up from the river level all the way to the top of the mountain.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! We have the tree, your presents under it are imaginary.
I took this photo a few weeks ago at the Reagan National Airport (DCA). I think they have at least three of them there. This one is near C gates, where USAir flies from. DCA is probably one of the coolest airports in US, at least the ones that I have a chance to go through.
What other airports are photogenic?
