Departing DC

Last time when I was in DC back in 2005, my cousin took me to a fine Afghan restaurant, where they served great-tasting kebabs that resembled our Uzbek kebabs from back home. The place was so good, that I persuaded my friend Mukhsim to go there for a dinner. The kebabs were so good, that we ended up going there multiple times!

Yum. The best-tasting kebab ribs! Seriously, if you happen to be near DC, you must check out the “The Afghan Restaurant” (yeah, that’s the name). The restaurant address is 2700 Jefferson Davis Highway, Alexandria, VA and their phone number is (703) 548-0022. If you do not know what to order, try their “Chopan Kabob” (translated as “Shepherd’s Kebab”, pictured above) – you won’t regret it.

The weather during the last two days in Washington DC was really bad – it first started raining, then started to snow on the day of my departure. Obviously, my camera stayed in the bag during those two days, so I did not take any pictures. The good news, however, is that the days were very productive and almost everything we planned for worked out as expected.

I was fortunate to meet with three of my cousins and their lovely families (whom I have not seen for about 8 years) and spent some quality time talking to them about everything from family to what’s going on back home. As I was getting ready to leave, I called my bro Bahtiyor and he joined us with his wife Dilya for dinner at Levante’s – a great Turkish restaurant on 19th street. Believe it or not, they had both Lahmacun and Pide on their menu!

After the nice dinner with friends and family, I headed back to the airport. It was snowing, but I got there on time. The airport was almost empty and the airplane was not even half full. I grabbed my camera bag and went all the way to the end of the plane and occupied three rear seats, which was nice! As the plane was starting to move, I took out the camera and snapped a quick picture of the window. I manually focused the lens to create some interesting bokeh:

It was very dark and it was surprising to see that the D700 with 24-70mm f/2.8G acquired focus instantly, despite the window having water drops all over the place:

I have never taken a picture from a plane at night and it was interesting to try it out. I first bumped up my ISO to 1600, but it was way too slow and I was getting a lot of blur. I pushed the ISO to 3200 and tried another shot at 1/13th of a second while using the seat as support, which worked great.

As the plane took off, it got even more challenging to photograph the night lights – the plane was shaking too much and anything below 1/25-1/30th of a second was not cutting it anymore. I took a few shots at ISO 6400 and eventually moved to ISO 12600. There was a lot of noise in these pictures, which I partially removed through post-production noise reduction (Nik Software Dfine).

Landing at the Denver International Airport is boring at night, because there is nothing interesting around it.

Either way, glad to be home! :)