Adams Morgan Day Festival

Adams Morgan Day Festival, a set on Flickr.

On the afternoon of September 11th, I attended the Adams Morgan Day Festival in DC. I want this set to reflect not only the sights of the festival but also a little bit of the Adam's Morgan quartier of DC including its habitants and establishments.

Anyways, the festival had music and dance performances, ethnic and American style food, and a number of stands selling arts and crafts. Being a warm sunny day DC, there was plenty of people at the festival, although the number of people who attended seemed to grow later on in the afternoon. Here are just some random details I remember from the festival. I remember seeing a lot of red balloons. Someone must have been giving them away. The karaoke singers seemed to be having a fun time. There was a police officer who sang the Frank Sinatra song "New York New York." The Brazilian style dancing was fun to watch as was the African dance music concert. Last year I missed the festival as I was out of town so it was nice to make it this year. I had a real fun time.

Hammock

Hammock , a set on Flickr.

Last Thursday, during the pouring rain which hit DC all that week, I attended a dance performance at the Kennedy Center called Hammock.

Bottles and Bokeh

The other morning, I got up early and went to Dupont Circle. I guess there must have been some party going on there the night before. By and around the fountain area there were several empty bottles of wine. Given the lighting conditions, it was an opportunity to take some wide open bokeh shots with my 50mm 1.8 AF-D. For those who are not familiar with photography, bokeh is the out of focus blur in a photograph. It comes from a Japanese term which means blur. The quality of bokeh depends on the lens. The 50mm 1.8 AF-D is not known for producing the highest quality of bokeh. Still for such a cheap lens, I am not going to complain about the bokeh. The new 50mm 1.8 AF-S G is supposed to be a little better though.



The last two were taken with my 24mm f/2 wide open. The lens is a little too soft wide open. I find it more fun to shot close up with it, that is if I shot it at f2. When focusing close up with a fast wide angle lens, the distortion of the lens produces an a curvature in the angle of view.



You can use such distortion close to make the image more creative. This image below wouldn't have been as interesting IMHO I had taken it with my distortion free 50mm 1.8.