We got up somewhat early and headed over to the Shady Grove Metro station. Since we had such a great time photographing the cherry blossoms with Washington Photo Safari, we decided to take their Monuments and Memorials course. What is really nice about this course is that there is at most 8 students and you receive lots of one-on-one attention. Normally the course is taught by David Luria but since he was in New York city, our instructor was Stewart Davis.
We met Stewart and the rest of the class at Lafayette Park. Before heading to the various monuments and memorials, we received alot of great advice from Stewart. He said that he has probably over 1,000,000 tips and that we would probably hear about 100,000 of them during the trip. We then proceeded to spend the next 4 hours photographing many of the sites in Washington, D.C. We went to the White House, the Albert Einstein Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial and then ended the morning at Union Station where we ended up having lunch.
All I can say is that we had an awesome time. We learned a lot and laughed a lot. The following are some of Stewart’s pearls of wisdom when it comes to photography:
#1 – the best photography book in the world is your camera’s manual
#2 – get close
#109 – spend your money on the lens, not the camera body
#534 – buy a camera you will carry with you every day
#612 – the best light meter is the one in your camera
#813 – you are one lens away from happiness
#825 – the best camera is the one you have right now
#931 – yellow is the new green!
After lunch we grabbed the Metro and headed back to the car. We decided that we would spend the rest of the afternoon shopping at Tysons Corner Center. After lots more walking and shopping, we met up with the rest of the Maloney family (Ross, Susie, Greg, Erika and Liz) at the Olive Garden and enjoyed a lovely dinner. We ended our day by checking into our hotel, the Residence Inn Fairfax Merrifield ($98 USD) in Falls Church, Virginia.
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