-- Mandalit del Barco NPR News

Here's what you won't see in this slideshow: a young woman in a short dress cat-walking on the roof of a stretched Hummer limo; urban dogs frolicking in the intersection's tiny patch of grass; and kids peddling four-dollar boxes of candy. Eventually I will beat the blur. - Tina Tennessen

Big projects are underway in East Falls Church. Developers and local leaders want to make it a commercial and residential hub at the intersection of a major highway and the local commuter rail line.

Which sounds pretty much like what East Falls Church once was. Route 29 crossed the Washington & Old Dominion line. Shops and a movie theater sat across the street from the train station. Most everything was vaporized to make way for the I-66 trench. Railroad buffs rescued the station and moved it to the Shenandoah Valley.

Where the Westlee condominiums stand, local residents used to dump trash, industrial waste and the occasional Model T along the banks of Four Mile Run. An oil-tank farm was there in World War II, and most recently a used-car lot.

-- Peter Overby

Here are some shots I took Thursday night in Old Town, Alexandria. The assignment was to choose a single corner and profile it using five images. I spent a few hours there, and shot about 200 photos. No shortage of interesting characters in Old Town!

Oh, people. Pictures are always better with them, but I discovered on this little assignment that, after about 10:00 PM, folks don't like having their pics taken - at least not in my Silver Spring neighborhood. Then again, maybe it was the driving rain. Luckily, I got just enough gracious subjects to put together this little slideshow. Enjoy.

Cory

The little city of Falls Church, Va., sandwiched between Arlington and Fairfax counties five miles west of D.C., has held a Memorial Day parade almost every year since the 1950s.

It's not your usual Memorial Day parade -- nary a high school marching band (the city's too small), only a couple VFW drill teams, a fairly big contingent of Shriners in mini-cars, and mainly, lots of cultural and ethnic groups from around the area.

Then there's the Westsider Marching Band, which buses down from Baltimore every year. As the Westsiders grow in popularity, they get moved further back in the parade order. This year they were almost at the end.

And here they are.

-- Peter Overby

Everywhere I go in the world, I look for the writing on the walls. In fact, I've been documenting graffiti murals since my early Hip Hop days in New York City. So when I heard there was a new graf mural going up in D.C., I went to check it out.

-- Mandalit del Barco

This morning, I walked to Dumbarton Oaks a sprawling estate, high above Georgetown. Gail Griffin, the director of gardens and grounds there, kindly introduced me to Rigoberto "Rigo" Castellon, a crew leader.

For an hour, he graciously gave me a tour of the impressive grounds. Afterward, I watched him and his co-workers pot plants and arrange the arbor terrace, overlooking a small grove of Kiefer pear trees. A dozen people oversee the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, which were designed by landscape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand.

About those Kiefer pears: As you'll see in these photographs, the gardening crew has put clear glass bottles around several of them. (Castellon uses twine to hold them in place.) When the pears are ripe -- and larger, the gardeners will fill the bottle with brandy. (This tradition is time-honored, I was told.) -- David Gura

Okay. It's official. I'm now a "radio photographer." Collecting these pics was great fun. I stopped in a watch/clock shop in Old Town Kensington, MD. The watch repairman, Yakov (referred to as a "watchmaker" by his colleagues at the counter), was kind enough to let me peer over his shoulder while he worked. He even gave me a little advice for keeping better time on my own watch. In this day and age, when so much of our technology is built to be tossed when it quits - not repaired - I find it darned reassuring there's still a man like Yakov in the world, making the old new again.

Cory

During our discussion today, we talked about how we can incorporate "NPR-ness" to our website, via blogs, audio slideshows, galleries, etc.
...Inspired by fellow Knight-in-training Ned Wharton, who tweeted about this idea, I also asked my facebook friends what 3 qualities of NPRness they could describe. This is what they wrote:

*Orginality!

*Integrity - Relevant - Spirit (NPR stories frequently touch my Spirit)
-
Mandalit del Barco/ NPR/ Knight training/ summer '09

Since I usually cover street gangs and police in Los Angeles, I decided to check out the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. I couldn't help but photograph a faux crime scene that I conjured from the exhibition. I even recruited a museum visitor who said she was a dancer in Las Vegas to pose as the pretend perpetrator of the murder!

--Mandalit del Barco

Summer '09 Knights in Training....
Today we learned how to use our cameras, since radio is such a VISUAL medium!!!
Everyone took such great shots, it'll be great to see what we come up with next.
Before we got sent off to shoot during lunch, we were getting lessons on how to stop traffic with our shutter speeds and using our macro lenses for all those close ups.
I have an example of how pictures can be somewhat decieving... uanfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to make it small enough to post here. Maybe tomorrow.
Watch this blogspot!!!-
- Mandalit

Day 2: Knight training.
Just finished learning how to post here.
Did I win the prize?

-- Mandalit

Meanwhile, back in L.A....
Mandalit del Barco