LOC Lipstick Photo

.

The Library of Congress on Flickr is, to me, without exaggeration, one of the awesomest things on the internet and in the world: scanned prints of historic public domain photos, uploaded for the community to openly view, tag, and comment.

This particular photo from 1943 especially caught my eye; a woman applying lipstick by a planter near the Senate Garage Fountain, with Union Station in the background. That’s just a few blocks from where we now live, so Amy and I couldn’t resist walking over and trying to duplicate the shot in the present day: (click the photo thumbs to see them larger on their Flickr pages.)

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C. (LOC) IMG_1940.JPG

This was in February, so Amy is wearing somewhat heavier clothing than the Lipstick Lady (and no hat), and I was a bit off on angle and zoom, but it’s all close enough. The park between here and Union Station has since gained many more trees, and the grounds appear to have been repaved with a new pattern since the 1940s, but other than that, the area looks essentially the same — note the lamp post.

Any other DC scenes from LOC that you want to see as they are in the modern day?

(Oh, and as for the Philippines, so far they’ve posted these carabaos in Albay.)

Update: I sent this entry over to LOC’s Matt Raymond and he liked it so much he linked to it from the LOC weblog. The photos later also got a brief mention in USA Today.

Caturday!

.

Amy and Pandora

Here we have Amy (in her painting clothes) on the couch, cuddling Pandora, who has become comfortably stretchy and amorphous.

Train Effects

.

Waiting on the platform for our [delayed] train home from New Jersey last weekend, I took out my camera and tried getting a half-second exposure of the lights of a departing NJ Transit train:

Train Warp

On the train later, I tried out the video time lapse feature at Trenton and Philadelphia, to see how stations and cities would look as we passed by in the night:

Video didn’t turn out all that great; this camera’s video mode doesn’t handle night time exposure very well. Some time I’ll try these rail trip timelapses in daylight, preferably on the side of the train facing towards the “Trenton Makes” bridge.

Metro Rearview

.

I’ve always wanted to get this video, and I finally got my chance last week, sitting at the back of a Red Line train on our way home from church: the view out the rear window of a Metro train going from Gallery Place/Chinatown to Judiciary Square on the Red Line. (The Speed Racer tunnel ad is not visible at this angle.)

Mobile Catchup

.

Some cameraphone photos from the past couple of weeks that have gone to Flickr but not to here:

New York Post Hillary Home Alone cover Sushi Robot

Funny Van 1 Funny Van 2

What's Wrong With This Sign? C&O Turtle

Union Station Metro Pan

First row, left: New York Post headline depicting Hillary Clinton as Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone,” shortly before the suspension of her campaign.

First row, right: Sushi Robot at Harbour Cafe, Washington Harbour, Georgetown.

Second row: Funny decals on a van, satirizing the life of a contractor.

Third row, left: What’s wrong with this sign before a sidewalk closed for construction on K Street?

Third row, right: Lazy turtle munches on floating mulberries in the C&O Canal.

Bottom, across: Quick mobile panorama of Union Station Metro, with Glenmont-bound train arriving at right.

Anniversary and Texture

.

Barong Up Close RRS_1970

Amy and I had our one-year wedding anniversary last week. We’re enjoying married life in DC greatly, and I thank the Lord for my wife literally every single day. Low-key introverts that we are, our anniversary celebration was a quiet, garlic-filled Sunday lunch of tapas and paella at Jaleo, followed by the purchase of a spanking new yellow DYSON from Russell.

On a related note, Russell pointed me to Smashing Magazine’s textures contest last month, so I figured, why not send in one of my favorite macro texture shots: my wedding barong. It didn’t win the grand prize (a DSLR camera), but it did get a mention in the contest results, which is fittingly awesome for our anniversary.

DC Timelapse – Passing Storm

.

DC Time Lapse - Passing Storm

Timelapse of the heavy storms that passed over DC this afternoon. The rain and wind/cloud change come very, very suddenly, then taper off while giving way to an unsettled stratocumulus layer.

Fetched every five seconds from the same weather news cam as was used for this earlier webcam timelapse. The frame rate might feel a bit jerky because the server dropped out occasionally, so sometimes there’s a time jump as it wasn’t always five-second intervals.

Update: I’ve replaced this with a new, smoother video which I fetched from the same webcam later in the evening, with more rain, and an added music track, “qwer” by 31d1. Watch for the bolt of lightning around -0:24!