Capitol Connection3 min read time

Is this the Stargate that transports people to different eras and different times? It may be when it’s not decorating the National Plaza in The Capitol – Washington, DC. Across from the Lincoln Monument and the reflecting pool, it sits innocently in plain site, possibly holding the key to the future of space and time travel, but I may be wrong about that…

We arrived there AFTER we visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Besides one of the largest McDonald’s restaurants I’ve ever seen, Air & Space was a fascinating place. This photo (above) is of the cockpit of a Boeing 747 before the advent of computers in the cockpit. I thought it was elegantly beautiful; both the design and layout of the instruments as well as the colors and lighting of the dials and interior. I’ve always envied airline pilots who spent a decade learning their craft and then watching the earth stream by at 600 mph 30,000 feet above, seeing everything and yet nothing at the same time.

Truly, this was a treat for me, to wander through several billion dollars of now mostly worthless government surplus which just happens to mark some of the most historic moments in history. I love it; the hardware, the history and the moment in time seared into my memory. To see the very things I only heard about in the news, decades earlier, connected memories and reality for the first time ever. Who knew a day in the seat of power; the capitol of our great nation had so much to discover, such as this giant set of balls. Nice….

The Last Stop

It was a long day and my new bride and I were almost done with Washington DC, thinking it was time to leave. On the way to our Jeep, we passed a small museum with less than 30 minutes before closing time. Crazy, wonderful, abstract exhibits scattered randomly throughout mostly empty large white rooms, some with incredible stories about some poor tortured artist and their quest for self-expression. Unfortunately, we had little time to discover just how tortured they were, we had just a few minutes left before the doors would close for the night.

The Gear

Shooting at 3,200 ISO hand held most of the day with my Sony A7rII camera and the amazing Sony/Zeiss FE 16-35 mm zoom lens, gave me a deep appreciation for how quickly photographic advances have happened, from my first Canon 5D.  Just one more lens added to my camera bag; The Sony/Zeiss FE 24-240 lens, which gives me all the range I need from just two lenses. Compared to the bag filled with equipment I carried before, this is now the lightest and highest quality image capturing system I have ever had. This new Sony camera; in just 10 short years makes me think about what I will be shooting with 10 years from now.

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