NGA tunnel of undulating lights
Calder silhouettes & moon in the sky
I had a very busy week with some travel to visit and see art and make photos....
Keith and I went to NGA to see a lecture on the Dutch City Scape exhibition which opened last Sunday and enjoyed the introduction but due to the large crowd and the unseasonable warm Februray weather the gallery was just too stuffy to go see the pictures on that day. Instead, we walked the mall and went to the Smithsonian's Sackler Asian Art gallery. I was very disappointed that we couldn't take pictures of Anish Kapoor's lovely "S" curved mirror sculpture. It is a giant fun house mirror in the lobby space. So we looked and then enjoyed the gardens and the sky and the warm air. Keith is learning to use his digital Single Lens Reflex camera and after his class that Friday he wanted to go practice using the manual settings. The weather was perfect for working outdoors with our cameras. We took loads of photos and had a very good time. I used my point and shoot and tried to help him with the settings on his SLR digital camera. The first thing we noticed on the way to the galleries was the Alexander Calder sculpture at the corner of the East wing and the waxing moon high in the sky at one in the afternoon! We discussed how to get all that in a photograph before we went indoors to try gallery lighting problems. The tunnel light installation downstairs near the lecture hall has been a lot of fun to go watch and Keith and I went to see if we could catch it on film. I think the best of my captures was the short video below.
If you are getting this as an email please click here to go see the webpage version where the video of the lights in the tunnel is loaded. Or just follow the link back to the Blog page on the net.
Winter came rushing back Monday an arctic cold blast blew in as I traveled out to Manassas to finish the bird puzzle and visit my family. It was bitterly cold with highs below freezing all day and night. The car door froze shut on my side one night when I took Mom to see the Clint Eastwood movie Grand Turino which was entertaining but deserted for the 10:00 PM show we chose. To drive home I climbed over from the passenger side to get in the drivers seat. Warm quilts were in order last week and I was delighted to sleep under one my great grand mother made with her sisters as a teenager. That means it was more than one hundred years old. We completed the bird puzzle and did some shopping and lots of laundry. My brother Dave was home one day and we got the lowdown on his job and the Microsoft server facility he works in very long hours. It's amazing the management thinks that putting these guys to oversee and maintain all those huge banks of servers in the windowless buildings for 13 hour days is a way to get better productivity. I feel it is burning up the skilled laborers even if they get 3 or 4 days off in between and a little extra pay for overtime. But I am not in management or productivity is not one of my strong points so maybe they are on to something. I just hope he decides to get some health and disability insurance soon because it is optional he opted out. Meanwhile he seems happy to be earning a good paycheck after many years depressed and unemployed.
I loaded dozens of my recent photos on my photo pages at flickr.com all with titles and tags today. Please drop over and take a look here >>>> Frederick on Flickr.com
Comments are always welcome here and on my photos at flickr.
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