Washington D.C. and Baltimore Trip

The last time I was in Washington D.C. I was about 10 years old. We took a family trip there with my grandparents and took in all of the sights the city had to offer. It was easily one of my favorite trips I ever took as a kid, so when I saw the Minnesota Twins were scheduled to play a series in Washington D.C. against the Nationals I thought it would be a good chance to revisit our nation’s capital and take in a little baseball at the same time. In addition to Washington D.C., we also decided to take the train up to Baltimore to catch a game at Camden Yards. Both Nationals Park and Camden Yards are great ballparks and I really enjoyed getting a chance to capture some photos of them. Just to note, most of the photos shown below are available in my Photo Archive. For this trip I used a Nikon D800 mostly with the Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 lens, a Fuji X100s, and my iPhone 5.

Nationals Park is a fairly new ballpark opening in 2008. It’s built in the modern style of having lots of various seating sections, great sight lines, and lots of amenities. It was nice to see the ballpark full for the series between the Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals (it always makes ballpark photos more pleasing). I loved the nice shadows that cast across the field on a great, sunny evening (click on the photos to view them larger).

While I was using the awesome Nikon D800 for the ballpark photos at Nationals Park, I also made sure to make some Instagrams while I was there.

The second game we caught at Nationals Park was a night game. There was a nice blue sky with puffy, white clouds before sunset that I wanted to highlight.

For some reason I really like black and white photos of ballparks at night. I think it’s because it reminds me of really old photos of ballparks I remember seeing and I think I like getting that feeling of a connection between baseball’s past and present. What’s surrounding the playing field might be far more advanced than what was used in the past, but the playing surface itself hasn’t changed in well over 100 years. I like to imagine that maybe I can look back at my black and white ballpark photos in 40 or 50 years and think of them as “historic”.

It should go without saying that we did a little sight-seeing between games. It was really neat visiting this historic city again as an adult after only experiencing it as a kid previously. I really appreciated breathing in the history of the landmarks. Plus, I finally got to see the World War II Memorial that didn’t exist when I was younger.

I had been to Arlington National Cemetery before, but seeing it now after knowing a lot more about our country’s history of war was very humbling.

Since we were walking around late at night I wanted to get a photo of the White House all lit up. My first impression when looking at the White House in the dark was how serene it was actually. It was very quiet and calm, but it stuck out so prominently through the dark. I thought it would make a really nice black and white photo and I’m very pleased with the result. I thought the simplicity captured the sereneness I felt when I was there.

Here are a couple of other Instagram photos from my time in Washington D.C. (others can be found on my Instagram feed):

I loved seeing Camden Yards for the first time, but unfortunately it poured rain off and on the entire day we were up there.

It made it a little difficult to enjoy the surroundings. However, it certainly made the mood of the field a lot more unique. Due to the rain I was using my phone a lot more than my more expensive camera.

Another black and white photo I couldn’t resist:

I think this photo below is one of my favorite baseball photos I’ve ever shot. It fits in with what I was talking about before in terms of a “historic” photo, but the rain just adds that something extra. I love how you can see the infield glistening because of how soaked it was with the pouring rain being illuminated by the stadium lights. The view that the general admission right field porch at Camden Yards offers is awesome too. You’re practically on top of the right fielder, which was Josh Hamilton in this case.

That’s all the photos I wanted to share right now, but I did want to briefly mention how much I loved using my new Fuji X100S on this trip. It was the first real test of the camera for me and I couldn’t have been happier with it. I loved how small it was and easy to carry around without any bulk. I didn’t bring the D800 to Baltimore instead opting to only bring the X100s because I knew lugging the D800 around would not be fun in the rain. I was able to keep the X100s safely under my jacket during the rain and I honestly don’t know if I would have even attempted that Josh Hamilton photo if I had been using the D800 because it was absolutely POURING rain at that point. The X100s image quality is really fantastic and it’s super quiet too. I bought it because I wanted a small, lightweight camera with great image quality that I could use as a daily walk-around camera when I wanted something higher quality than my iPhone. It absolutely fits the bill for that purpose, so I’ve pleased to have it as another camera option.

Thanks for taking a look at my photos!