Day 149/365 - Supporting My People

Local news and information website DCist.com has a 'Photo of the Day' feature wherein they highlight the work of a local photographer. In order to solicit photos for that feature, as well as to provide illustrations for the site's articles and other features, DCist has its own photo pool on Flickr. Additionally, they run an annual "DCist Exposed" photography exhibit.

This year's show is being held at Flashpoint, an arts incubator in the Gallery Place section of Washington, DC. It closes tomorrow, so tonight I made sure I swung by Flashpoint on the way home from work so I could finally check it out. Quite a few of my Flickr contacts have works on display in the exhibit: Erin, Brian, Marie, Pat, Phil, and Angela.

There were some really amazing photos in the exhibition. I put a few of my own entries in, but I didn't get selected for the show. Oh well, guess I'll just have to work at taking better pictures this year so I can make it into next year's exhibition.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 45/365 - Pictures at an Exhibition

This afternoon I went over to Georgetown to check out the exhibits at the main FotoWeek DC gallery. There were some really amazing photos there. I saw some stuff that gave me some ideas I wanted to try. They had one cool exhibit that featured massive enlargements of photographer's contact sheets. That exhibit mentioned how, with the advent of digital photography, contact sheets are a bit of an endangered species. I still have some of my old contact sheets from my high school and college photography classes. I had been thinking about pitching them, but now I think maybe I'll hang onto them.

I was walking around the gallery today taking loads of photos of people looking at photos. At one point I think I got 'mistooken' for a working photographer. I was leaning over a railing taking shots of the lower gallery area and some girls that were coming up the stairs heard my camera going 'tchkuh, tchkuh, tchkuh' and got all excited because they thought they were going to end up in some artsy photographer's photo. One of them told the others to play it cool and just keep walking so it wouldn't mess up the picture.

Little did they know they were just going to wind up on my Flickr page rather than in a gallery. It's a sort of sad substitute for fame, but it beats nothing I suppose.

(With apologies to Mussorgsky's ghost for the theft of the title.)

(Taken with my Nikon D80)