Playing Dress Up

Boy, do people love to dress up. To be honest, I'm not a fan myself. While I love to get into fancier clothes or wear flashier jewelry for a night on the town, I don't enjoy donning costumes and playing characters. After years of dance recitals, you would imagine that I would be used to that routine, but I think the experience actually created this aversion to playing dress up.

Although I don't dress up for costume parties or Halloween often, I do love when others do, especially if their costumes and adopted personas are creative and inventive. Each Tuesday before Halloween, I look forward to the annual High Heel Race in Dupont Circle. Every year, the runners never fail to impress me with their costume tributes to American pop culture.

High Heel Race competitors' costumes usually reflect the dreams and desires of our pop culture-obsessed society. For all the typical Lady Gagas, Amy Winehouses and Pan Am flight attendants in this year's race -- which celebrated its 25th anniversary last week -- there were more imaginative entries, such as these mermaids "swimming" with fisherman.

Practicing my night photography at the race, I was so disappointed that many of my photos didn't come out until I saw this one. I love how the blurriness of light perfectly depicts the dreaminess of these racers. Even if the image was in sharper focus, I don't think I would have liked it more than this final composition.

Today's photography lesson -- Don't delete photos on your camera. Wait until you upload and see them on a larger screen before deleting. Sometimes, the small LCD monitor on our digital cameras fail to reveal the possibilities of a so-so photograph. I'm glad I waited and didn't rashly delete this one from my camera during the race.