Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Washington D.C. Loaded with all my camera gear (which fortunately also included a new Tamrac case), I took to the city. Aside from a protest I got the chance to cover (I'll save that for a later post), it was a pretty uneventful trip.

I found that, at times, the most interesting things to photograph were the people in the city. Millions of tourists had already taken billions of photographs of the city's famous landmarks. Why did I need to add to the stockpile? Above is a police officer from the previously mentioned protest.

One tool I had at my disposal was a cheap (~$35) old Pentax lens I found on eBay. Going down to f2.0 (at 50mm), the lens allowed me to photograph some fairly low-light situations. Coupled with a high ISO in my camera, which unfortunately does not yield fantastic results, I was able to take quite a few interesting shots. The photograph above was taken in the capital building, and highlights some of the flags they had on display.

This photograph, one of my "lucky shots" from the trip, was taken at the Arlington Cemetery metro stop. I had just come up the stairs at the station, and turned to see a man with a cowboy hat walking towards where I was standing. I quickly held up my camera, focused it as best I could, and took the photograph.

Speaking of Arlington Cemetery, I must say that it had the most impact on me out of everything in the city. Though it was raining that day, my camera (Pentax K10D) was weather resistant. Because of this, I was able to shoot some dramatic images of the cemetery. The wet pavement gave me great reflections to work with, and the gloom in the skies only added to the mood of the experience. More images from this trip can be found on flickr.