My youngest has started travel soccer. Round one was a tournament in Norther VA which is really home of the massive data center. I should have done an entire photo series about those strange buildings standing amidst the strip malls which were former farms, which were former swamps. Maybe next time. I was able to mix in some nature photography with the soccer.
I would have thought someone had remixed the Virginia is for Data Center Lovers sign.
And your youngest is old!
I’ll be back in Northern VA frequently. I will have to document just how crazy it is.
My youngest being 16 is odd. The oldest being 22 is odder. I guess that’s how it works.
That bird with the dark background and the other bird and purple flowers beneath is a stunning shot. Wow! It almost looks photshopped the way the background is dark blue like that, I totally love that effect. And as always, your photosalways interest me, they are as peculiar as your mind. I love of leave folks on the ground going on here 🙂
The birds with virtually blank (but colored) backgrounds is something I never thought about until I saw some bird photographer talking about it. This place had some perfect spots to attempt it. Weird how things like that come together at odd times.
Man, Northern Virginia. When I dropped out of Va. Tech and moved back home I bumped into a high school buddy who had washed out of Virginia Military Institute. He was working first as a glass installer doing the big architectural installs (think shopping mall railings overlooking big food courts). Then his Dad got him a job working for a big Telecom outfit as a telecom installer trainee. And that was ALL in Northern VA. I think the company was GTE (who his dad worked for). And he said (remembering back now it must have been 1988), “You would not believe HOW MUCH FIBRE OPTIC CABLE installs are being done all through Northern Virginia. And this was 1988,… like the die was already cast before the National Information Infrastructure Act of 1993. Some big players were already at work divvying up the land, deciding who would win 5 years before the Internet actually hit. And then 2 years after that point, before the NCSA Mosaic hit. By 1995 if you didn’t have a data center architect and an estate agent buying up cheap land with access to GTE’s fibre plant, you already lost.