Something funny about shooting photos in the Metro of people with no pants on…
7 minute read
January 8, 2012, 7:09 PM
Yes, today was the day of Capitol Improv‘s annual “No Pants Metro Ride”. It was exactly what it sounds like: people come in and ride Metro with no pants on. Basically, people have shoes on, are fully dressed from the waist up, and are wearing their underwear, but the pants are missing.
Now you may recall that I went to this event last year and covered it for Schumin Web, though the photos never got any further than a Journal entry for various reasons. This year, I went again, and I was once again out to photograph the excitement, while keeping my pants firmly on my body. Considering that I covered the event pretty well last year, I decided to make the photography more interesting for myself. Thus I shot everything in black and white. Black and white, you see, makes you look at things differently, and think differently as a result. Black and white photography makes you look at lightness and darkness and the play between them, while color photography obviously focuses more on colors. And like Big Mavica, the Canon won’t stay in black and white if you turn it off. You have to set it to black and white every time you turn it on. Trust me when I say I got really good at quickly setting the camera to black and white every time I powered it on.
So at 2:00, everyone met up at Hancock Park, which is a small open space in DC across the street from the north entrance to L’Enfant Plaza station. There, they laid out the course and gave some advice on how to do things.
Bruce (with the bullhorn) discusses the course, explaining how Dupont Circle is probably the furthest west that participants should go on the Red Line.
Continue reading…So I don’t know if I’m courageous or insane, but will you sponsor me nonetheless?
3 minute read
December 18, 2011, 10:31 PM
I really don’t know if this makes me courageous or insane, but I’m going to be jumping into the Potomac River on January 21, 2012 as part of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network‘s “Keep Winter Cold” polar bear plunge event to help raise money for climate work.
In other words, I’m going to be doing this:
Yes. That.
Categories: Events
Braaaaaaaaaaains…
5 minute read
October 26, 2011, 12:24 AM
First of all, I can’t believe that Halloween is almost upon us again! Feels like just yesterday that it was Labor Day, no?
In the spirit of Halloween, I got together with some friends last Saturday night, and attended the fourth annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk in downtown Silver Spring. For those who don’t know, a zombie walk is an event where people dress up like the undead as commonly portrayed in works of fiction, and then walk through an area as a group, in character. In addition to people dressed as zombies, you also have people dressed as “zombie hunters”, who dress up like commandos and carry Nerf weapons and other similar faux-artillery.
In Silver Spring, my friends went dressed as zombies. I went straight and had my camera out. My goal was to get some photos and have a good time. I’d dare say that both goals were accomplished. The zombie walk gathered at approximately the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Sligo Avenue outside Jackie’s, just north of the point where the Red Line crosses Georgia Avenue (you know, that bright pink bridge). Once we got going, we walked north on Georgia Avenue as far as Ellsworth Drive. Then we made a right turn, walked east on Ellsworth Drive through the “Downtown” development, made a left turn, walked north on Fenton Street for two blocks, and then turned left and walked west on Colesville Road to the AFI Silver theater. There, the theater was showing two horror movies, and was the formal end of the zombie walk. We didn’t go to the movies, and instead continued on to Georgia Avenue, and then went back to the “Downtown” development on Ellsworth Drive, where we got to hang out for a while. Not bad!
Categories: Events, Friends, Halloween, Silver Spring
National Train Day!
8 minute read
May 7, 2011, 11:17 PM
Today was National Train Day, and so I headed on down to Union Station to check it all out. I had been to National Train Day once before in 2009, so I kind of knew what to expect, but still, it’s always neat to see the different rolling stock that they had on display. Rail cars that travel over the national rail network are very different from those on urban mass transit systems, and so it’s always a treat to see them.
I took the Metro from Grosvenor (yes, Grosvenor) to get to Union Station. The way I figured, since I was also going to a Wikipedia meetup afterwards in Tenleytown, this made more sense than going all the way around to Glenmont afterwards. Plus I’ve never originated a day’s Metro riding from Grosvenor before.
Arriving at Union Station, I found the line. Specifically, the line for the train equipment display. After all, I came to see the real trains. The model trains don’t interest me so much. I want to see the real thing when I go out. The line was long. The end of the line, when I found it, was out in the shops, back here:
Pillow fight…
4 minute read
April 30, 2011, 9:03 PM
First of all, I don’t know why I never posted about this earlier. I must have been really busy. This event is too small for a photo set, and the video coverage is significant, which knocks it out of Photography. In addition, I think I’m going to rethink the way I go about the concept of the year-end-cleanup photo set for Life and Times, so I can’t guarantee that it will get coverage there. So here we are. Better late than never, I suppose.
On April 2, Capitol Improv celebrated International Pillow Fight Day in Washington DC, first at the Capitol building, and later in Dupont Circle. I skipped the Capitol part (and just as well – I’m told that they got kicked out), and caught up with them at Dupont Circle at the appointed time.
However, first thing I did was get ready for this event. See, I figure that if you’re going to be at an event where you know for a fact large objects are going to be moving around at high speed, you might as well bring some protection. So on the way to the Metro, I stopped at the Home Depot store on Georgia Avenue in order to get a pair of safety glasses. The way I figured, it’s like this: I can’t see without my glasses, and I wanted to get close-in photos. So in order to protect the real glasses, I got safety glasses to wear over them. That way, if I got hit, the $3.00 safety glasses would take the hit and not my real glasses (or my eyes for that matter). Maybe I was being over-cautious, but better safe than sorry (and blind).
I was so glad that it was not snowing this time around…
7 minute read
January 31, 2011, 9:28 PM
This past Saturday, January 29, was the date of Plungefest, the 15th annual Maryland State Police Polar Bear Plunge. This was the third polar bear plunge that I had attended overall, and the second time at the Maryland event specifically.
Compared to last year, the basic event was structured the same way, but there were a number of details that differed significantly from last year. While the main sponsor tent was in the same location, the back end was different. Last year, the back of the tent featured live entertainment. Not so this year, as carnival games and multiple moon bounces filled that space. They also had one of those inflatable dancing men dancing up a storm back there:
Categories: Events
And if all goes well, we will have a freezing cold Potomac in winter for many years to come…
5 minute read
January 23, 2011, 10:53 PM
So Saturday was fun. Katy, a coworker of mine, and her roommate Ryan were going to be participating in a polar bear plunge at the National Harbor. It was sponsored by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), a grassroots group that works to fight global warming.
Of course, the group would pick the coldest weekend of the season thus far to have the plunge. But at least it wasn’t snowing like it was for the Maryland plunge last year. The sky was clear. It was just really cold. But “really cold” is something I can handle, when you consider that I was wearing about three layers, plus warm boots and gloves.
For an event that opposes climate change, though, it’s kind of ironic to have it at National Harbor. It’s not very transit-accessible (only one bus route serves it), and as a result, from what I could tell, most people drove there. I suppose a better place might have been the Tidal Basin in DC, being closer to Metro. But the National Harbor seemed to work.
Categories: Events
No better day for a Metro ride… without pants.
4 minute read
January 10, 2011, 11:30 PM
Yes, you heard that correctly. Without pants. See, Sunday was the day that Capitol Improv did its annual “No Pants Metro Ride”. It’s the exact same idea as Improv Everywhere‘s No Pants Subway Ride in New York City, but this was in DC, on our subway.
The group met up at Hancock Park in DC, which is on the next block from the north entrance to L’Enfant Plaza station. As demonstrated in this photo, we had a good amount of people participating:
Let me tell you, I had a really good time on Saturday…
5 minute read
January 31, 2010, 9:35 PM
I had a really good time on Saturday. I went to the Maryland State Police Polar Bear Plunge, aka “Plungapalooza”, and while it was really, really, really cold and snowing, I had a blast.
The event was held at Sandy Point State Park, near Annapolis. The idea is simple: put on a swimsuit, and run into a body of ice-cold water in the middle of winter. The proceeds from the event went to support Special Olympics, and of course, all involved had a great time.
As I mentioned before, I didn’t jump in. Nuh-uh. Too cold. And when you consider all the cold-weather gear I was wearing, I was determined to stay toasty warm, too. And for the most part, I did.
Getting there involved taking the Beltway to Route 50, and then a short distance on local roads to the parking area. Parking involved leaving the car at a satellite location and then taking a shuttle bus to the site. I parked at the Naval Academy Stadium, and took a bus from there. That was like jumping into a time-warp. The bus appeared to be of more recent mint than I would have ridden, but the interior was light green, and the seats were dark green. I thought they got rid of that when they started using the brown interiors in the late 80s. I guess I was wrong. Ugly green on uglier green is obviously alive and well in the 2010s.
Categories: Annapolis, Driving, Events, Winter weather
But the workahol is so good!
3 minute read
January 27, 2010, 10:23 PM
There’s a reason I haven’t written a Journal entry in a week… it’s because I’ve been working myself ragged at the office. These 12-hour days have caused me to question my own sanity. But I’ve got a really big project I’m working on, and am somehow managing to do that plus all the usual stuff I do all the time. It’s been leaving me physically and mentally exhausted by the end of the day. I barely even have the energy to do Wikipedia, let alone actually write an original thought.
So yeah, I’ve been a little workaholic this last week or so. I’m planning to go to Plungapalooza this weekend, and I’m seriously questioning whether I’ll be able to actually drag myself out of bed to go out there on Saturday. If I do manage to get up to go, though, Plungapalooza ought to be fun. I’m not going to be donning a speedo and jumping in, though. Nuh-uh. I’m bringing my camera along and joining whatever other bloggers happen to be there, in order to write about the event in this space, as well as potentially make a Photography set out of the event. And I’ve been looking forward to going for about a year. I wrote about it last year, and noted that I should save the date. Well, I did. If I can muster up the strength to go, I’m going. And bringing a hat, coat, and gloves.
I so want to go to one of these…
2 minute read
February 5, 2009, 9:02 PM
I so want to go to a polar bear plunge – one of those events where a whole bunch of people run into a body of water in the middle of winter to raise money for a charitable cause. They look like a lot of fun, based on the photos I’ve seen. One of the bigger events, Plungapalooza, is held at Sandy Point State Park in Maryland. According to Google Maps, it’s a shade under an hour’s driving time to Sandy Point State Park from my house.
The reason I bring it up is because I saw an article in the “Fit” section of the Express on Tuesday about this year’s Plungapalooza event that happened on January 24. They ran three photos of the event with the article. Two in particular caught my attention:
Photos: Jonathan Newton/TWP (left), AP/Baltimore Sun/Monica Lopossay (right)
Categories: Events
This time change, unlike most, has me a bit on edge…
2 minute read
March 10, 2007, 10:17 AM
Unless you live in Arizona, the United States changes its clocks twice a year – once in the beginning of April and once at the end of October, going onto and off of daylight savings. Okay. Routine. Now, however, with this new energy bill that got passed, it’s the middle of March that we go onto daylight savings, and early November (I believe) that we go back to standard time. As a result, it just seems awfully early to be changing over to daylight savings, partly because it is.
Usually this is so routine. We change the clocks and I’m like, okay. And life goes on. But due to the earlier date, I’m running myself ragged on it. I’m fairly confident that my computers will change on their own, and I’m also confident that my cell phone will change on its own. I’ve already changed my alarm clock. Still, I’ve been obsessing over this, worried that somehow I’ll have forgotten to change something, and end up late for work tomorrow.
This, folks, is a partial explanation as to why I’ve found a few hairs coming in white as of late. I’m running myself silly over smaller issues.