Converging on the Capitol

I took this photo Friday evening while standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. In the very center of the photo is the Capitol. On the left is the Pennsylvania North, the Newseum, and the Embassy of Canada. On the right is the Federal Trade Commission. Behind the trees on the right is a crane for ongoing construction at the National Gallery of Art.

I like night photos such as this one because, counterintuitively, there are some nice saturated colors. However, I also like this image for the perspective. The lines in the image converging on the Capitol remind me of a drawing technique I learned in school as a child. We were studying how Renaissance artists would create 3-dimensional images using a 2-dimensional medium (painting) by placing a dot in the center of a painting then drawing lines radiating outward from the dot. They would then draw structures and objects within the lines. The technique creates startlingly accurate perspective. I was quite taken with the technique. I liked the idea of using mathematics to draw beautiful pictures. (Wikipedia has a great article about perspective.)