Heapin' Helpin' of Landmarks
I noticed this view way back in spring and note it almost every morning from the bus as it crosses the Potomac on the 14th Street Bridge traveling from Virginia to the District of Columbia. I thought if I were standing in just the right spot, I could get these four landmarks, not often photographed together, in one shot. If one part of photography is having an eye to see the picture, another is being at precisely the exact place to get it. Maybe photographers wish they could defy gravity, at times, to capture the perfect angle.
The other day I finally got to where I needed to be: on a pedestrian walkway along the westbound lane of the same bridge. I have to say, the resulting photo wasn’t quite as magical as I expected. A blue sky and full sun would have helped. I also think I should have been standing another hundred feet closer but that would have required hovering about 25 feet above the river. I have been known to break a few rules, but I’m not good at defying gravity.
My next challenge was finding the right caption. Pile o’ Landmarks? Famous Building Scrum? Three Presidents and a Church? (too obscure, since the Watergate isn’t called The Nixon Building). Bunch of Brilliant Buildings? Actually, I’m pretty sure one morning sitting on the bus I came up with a funny, perfect caption, but I’m not paging through four journals full of my sometimes difficult penmanship just to find it. I’ll leave it forgotten and maybe give my posterity a laugh when they go through my papers and files.
After the long wait to take the picture, I couldn’t not publish it, couldn’t not give it a caption. So here it is. One morning I wondered if someday, either as a full-time writer or else a retired eccentric geezer, I could go to that same spot every day for 365 days and take the same shot and put them all in a book. It’s so wacky, it just might sell. And getting there would give the old guy (me) exercise.
