Friday, June 04, 2004
It Pays to Schlep Your Camera!
Yesterday afternoon, I drove to Washington Dulles International Airport, out in the boondocks of Northern Virginia, to pick up my in-laws. They were arriving from Ottawa to be with us for Ben's high school graduation this coming Monday.
Just for the heck of it, I brought my camera along. I've been doing a lot of that lately, bringing my camera to work, trips to the landfill, etc. You never know.
I left plenty of time for the trip to Dulles, because traffic can often be horrible. As it turned out, traffic was horrible only for those going in the opposite direction from me, and I arrived at Dulles with plenty of time to spare for the 8:27 pm arrival.
I hadn't been at Dulles for a number of years, and definitely not since I was reborn as a photographer. As I approached the terminal, I appreciated its elegant, sweeping, ahead-of-its-time design. The architect was Eero Saarinen, and Eero really understood aero! He was also the architect for the TWA terminal at New York's JFK Airport
Overcoming a childhood handicap of having too many double vowels in his name, Saarinen rose to prominence as a master of modern architecture in the 1950's. Both of these Jetsonesque terminal buildings are now approaching 50 years old, but unlike much of this genre, they still look fresh and full of vitality.
You can see from my photo that Eero had as keen a sense of light as he did of form and function. As I walked through the terminal at 8:00 pm, I was treated to the sublime interplay of light and shadow from his west facade.
It pays to schlep your camera!
