I was inspired to head downtown early Sunday morning to take some pictures around town, primarily to fulfill my mission to get photographs of the Georgetown Law Center for my brother. After roaming around aimlessly for a while looking for what I thought would have been obviously marked buildings proclaiming which buildings were part of the Law Center, I gave up on the idea of getting those shots and headed towards the Mall and the Tidal Basin instead. Sunday didn’t turn out to be a great day for photography, very gray and overcast, but there were plenty of photographers roaming both the Mall and the Tidal Basin.

My weekend trip reminded me of a weekend stroll to the FDR Memorial last year where I saw a guy carrying a Nikon D2X with a 200-400mm VR lens, major photographic bling bling. I have to admit I was a bit intimidated holding my ancient F4S with a very beat up 80-200mm lens shooting leftover film (I also had my trusty D70 with it’s equally as trusty kit lens, the 18-70mm DX, which I thought was expensive). As I was getting ready to leave, he pulled ANOTHER D2X out of his backpack, this one with a f2.8 17-35mm lens attached to it. WOW! This guy easily flashed about $17,000 in Nikon equipment in the brief two minutes we sat there resting, as if to say “I’m the alpha Nikon dude here, don’t mess with me, you photographic weakling”. Yeah sure, I know that equipment doesn’t make the photographer, but I was blown away at the fact that this dude just casually whipped out the most expensive in Nikon equipment like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Is our area good for high paying jobs or what? Damn, that’s some serious shit.