To those here in longer-term relationships…
Remember back when, in the early days of your beginning romance, when love was new and novel, and every contact and conversation, felt affectionate and affirming?
Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to bottle up this thaumaturgy and apportion it out, over time, as needed, throughout love’s hills and valleys?
In a way, thankfully for me, because I treat photography autobiographically (photography as life) and anthropomorphically (photography as lover), I get to experience these love sensations, each and every time I put a camera in my hands and click away
Por Amor.
Recently, about a month ago, on my way back from a month-long trip to Cape Cod, I stopped and completed a small, 3-day project for Salamander Washington DC, a luxury Postmodernist-style hotel, formerly operated as Mandarin Oriental Washington, D.C.
My assignment marching orders were one thing, and one thing only, to photograph the hotel and surrounding Basin area, within the context of the 2023 Cherry Blossom Peak Bloom. Done. Click.
I planned my visit, with great care and timing, around the peak, photographic weather conditions.
It was spectacular. Mercy!
I tend to be a pretty all-work-and-no-play, disciplined, driven and dedicated Worker-bee, focused heartily and happily, on the needs and wishes of the client I’m shooting for. But this trip, mysteriously, in addition to the work itself, had an emotional element of gooey and sticky to it?
Weather? Subject matter? Light? My frame-of-mind? Internal journeying? Maybe all?
I can’t quite put my finger on it but, over this short visit in Washington, at this property, during this time of year, under these weather conditions, I felt strangely and oddly like I was in love, the beginnings of a new rapport and romance.
It was nice.
And as such, I enjoyed all those life and love-affirming ideas and ideals that you normally associate with love, while I was photographing.
I needed this.
Washington, in the Spring, is spectacular. Put it on your bucket list. The Hotel is full of awesomeness too.
Definitely check out the Afternoon High-Tea service or have Teddy, at the bar, whip you up one of his curated cocktails. Oh my.
Por Amor
Click
Jack
P.S. All images were shot on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, 1 TB, over the course of a 3-night stay at Salamander DC
