DC By Day: A Smartphone User’s Paradise

Washington DC is one of the most photogenic cities in the country, by night or day. So on this special photo safari designed for smartphone users we are going to take a limited number of clients to DC’s best-known memorials and show you where and how to take great pictures with your phone!

And smartphones themselves are getting better every year for travel photography! The late-model iPhones, Samsungs, Motorola, LG, and Google Phones are much better now than their predecessors, with excellent exposure, color and white balance rendition.

We begin our safari at the base of the Ulysses Grant statue next to the Capitol to photograph the beautiful West Front of the U.S. Capitol, and the view across the Capitol Reflecting Pool of the Smithsonian Castle and the National Mall. This is followed by a stop in the Tidal Basin parking lot to capture the iconic Jefferson Memorial, reflected in the waters of the Tidal Basin.

Our next stop is the Lincoln Memorial, with its famous view down the Reflecting Pool of the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol, as well as its view of the Rosslyn, VA Skyline and Arlington Memorial Bridge across the Potomac River. We also photograph the magnificent Lincoln statue sculpted by Daniel Chester French.

We end our safari by taking you across the Potomac to Arlington, VA to The View, the entrance to a 34-story high observation deck in Arlington with magnificent afternoon-sun overview of the entire DC skyline, right across the street from the Rosslyn METRO exit. (It offers the same view you see from your left-side airplane seat as you fly into DC from the north!)

Washington Photo Safari Director E. David Luria will guide you at each stop, showing you how to use all the features of your phone to get the best shots, helpjng you take photos and selfies that you can share with friends and family. Mr. Luria, trained in Paris by a protégé of the famous French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, is one of DC’s most prominent architectural photographers, who has trained over 40,000 amateur shutterbugs on camera use and composition since 1999.

Here is a sampling of the photos you will get on this safari:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/123745666@N04/albums/72177720297912736

If you like to take pictures with your phone, this is a great activity to get the most iconic views of the city in your phone to share on social media. Late-model smartphones preferred for this safari, but any phone or camera will do. No tripods. Meet at base of Ulysses Grant Statue on U.S. Capitol grounds. The Safari ends at Rosslyn Metro. Limited to first 4 people who register.

(For clients arriving by car, use a Taxi or Uber to Ulysses Grant Statue in front of U.S. Capitol.)