Portrait

A photographer friend of mine suggested that people needn't be afraid of taking "portrait" oriented images, suggesting that most folks miss good shots because the "landscape" orientation is the easiest to understand.  That seems to make sense.  To me, though, I decide between portrait and landscape based on my subject.  Take this staircase leading from the ground level to the first floor of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Portrait orientation seems to be the only way to shoot this.

Taken with an iPhone 5s, there's a dungeon-like feel to this shot, where the stairs up from the darkness to the Supreme Court courtroom lead to freedom and light.

Stairs of Symmetry

Left is the Russell Senate Office Building, Right is the Supreme Court Building.  There's a joke in here about the two equal branches of government (Congress and the Courts) being like a square peg and a round hole.  The Left is looking down, the Right is looking up.  When I build my own house, I'm going to have to get a staircase like one of these.

Both of these are taken with an iPhone 5s on separate occasions.

Supreme Court

It's not often that you find a major tourist destination in Washington, DC barren and empty of visitors.  But such was my luck a few days ago when my family and I visited the Supreme Court - a building which had been, up until recently, covered by some sort of construction drapery.  The more I look at this photo, the more I marvel at it as I very well could have taken it as a color photo and gotten nearly the same result.  Also, my family and I sitting on the steps look so small.  It cannot be overstated how large buildings are in Washington, DC., and while from the sidewalk this building doesn't appear to be unusually big, the long run from my camera to the seated position on the steps was just far enough to match the length of the timer on my camera.

Taken with a Canon Rebel XS with the stock lens and the 10 second timer, I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at this one.