Washington, D.C.

Taken at a late lunch/early dinner after a business meeting in D.C. on June 28th. We were on the roof of the Washington Hotel beside the Treasury Building about one block from the White House. Great view from up there.

These were taken with a Coolpix 4200...

 

Thanks for the comments. The second image was originally wider (as in width of the image, not the shooting angle), but I was constrained by the edge of the balcony on the left and the relatively messy rooftops on the right (see the original uncropped image below), so I made a crop of the best parts. To me, the taller building on the left just didn't look as good on the wider original. The 4200 can make a slightly wider angled shot, but from where I was, that just meant more balcony and more sky, so I zoomed in a bit for the shot. The 4200 does do nice panoramas, but I would have had to hand-hold them -- it would've been a cool thing to try, though...

The darkness of the first one is really just a happy accident -- I was playing with these at work using Picassa instead of PSP and that was the best balance I could get of the large bright sky and the ground details using the limited touch-up tools in Picassa. Picassa is nice for what it does, but its brightness and contrast tools add a lot of noise to the image.