Adams Morgan Excursion

My friend and fellow Excursionaire, Mary, obligingly took on the role as the person in the bright jacket walking past this lovely mural in Adams Morgan.

Mary and I were walking from the subway stop to our Meetup point, a Starbucks in the heart of the colorful Adams Morgan neighborhood.

Little Drummer Boy

"When you see red, shoot it!"

Someone told me that a few years ago, and I've found it's usually good advice.

So the Chinese New Year Parade was a great opportunity, as red is considered a propitious color, and red was all over the place. The reddest group at all was this group of young musicians and their red drums. I loved it!

By the way, when I was a kid, Little Drummer Boy (the song, that is,) scared the crap out of me. As a seven-year-old in 1957, I couldn't understand the words over my Uncle Heniek's crackly old radio, and they wouldn't have made sense to me back then anyway. But that ominous, dirge-y music!

I like this Little Drummer Boy much better.

Man in Bistro

My brother Mark and I went to DC Sunday afternoon to have lunch with our cousins before their return to Israel. As we were being seated, I noticed this elegant gentleman deep in thought (or maybe just studying the menu) by the window.

I normally stay away from stealing moments like this, because I'm too slow and fumble-fingered to be a good candid photographer. But this gentleman was an interesting subject, and I really liked the lighting coming through the window, lighting half of the man as well as the bright red shirt behind him, while leaving the other half of him in shadow. So I grabbed my camera and channeled Henri Cartier-Bresson for a minute:

"What is best in photography is that you are catching an instant that will disappear. The photographer is like the voleur, the thief; he steals a moment, a fleeting moment and then he runs away with it in his camera. Being a photographer you have to be quick, quick, quick; you have to be like quicksilver, yes, like a tightrope dancer with death at the end.”

Well, I wasn't quick, quick, quick, but as this gentleman seemed to be concentrating on something else, I was quick enough.