George Washington never looked like this
New York, NY, March 2011
About this photo: I keep finding vehicular scenes to share, so I keep posting 'em. Hope that's OK with you. New Thematic goes live tomorrow (Sunday) night. Until then, click here to get your last-minute submissions in. Deadlines don't really apply here.Shooting* from a car is a sketchy proposition on a good day. But add some cloud, some spitting rain, some smudgy windows, lots of stop-and-go traffic and a pocket camera (temporarily stole it from my wife - please don't tell her) that doesn't much tolerate on-the-move action photography and you've got a recipe for a memory card full of nothingness.
But I tried, anyway, because I had never been on this particular structure, the George Washington Bridge, and I had read about the work of its chief engineer, Othmar Ammann for so long that I wanted to have some kind of memory of the moment. I'm odd that way, but you know that by now. Or soon will.
So, much to the amusement of my colleagues, I randomly shot through the fixed minivan windows as we approached the bridge, and kept shooting as we crept along. I'm sure adjacent motorists were thinking "terrorist", but that didn't stop me, either.
In the end, the results weren't half-bad. They're stark, unintentionally monochrome slices of an iconic piece of American engineering. More importantly, they take me back to a rather light-hearted moment with a great bunch of people, and they give me a slice of reality that I'm able to share with my family - and with you. They remind me why even grey days demand little injections of color wherever we can manage them.
Your turn: How do you turn a grey day into a colorful one?
One more thing: Bonus points for anyone who knows what the heck I'm talking about with the title to this entry.
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* Shooting, as in photography. Not, you know, shooting. I've done both. I prefer the lens kind, but I admit feeling an immense sense of power and responsibility when I first pulled the trigger and felt the gun - a Galil assault rifle - recoil. Story for another day, I suppose.
