An Oculus Wood Print

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I am not an architect, and after taking this photograph in a museum in Washington, D.C., I had trouble finding the term for this circular opening between two floors. I asked several attendants but no one knew the architectural term. Finally I was directed to a young man walking down the hall. He took one look at the photo on my camera and said, "Oh, that's an oculus." As I struggled with how to spell "oculus", he politely told me how to spell it and then went on to say "Oculus means round, it is Latin for the word eye, and as an architectural term it is basically anything that is round that you can see through, such as a round window, or this circular cut between two floors." I thanked him and started to leave but a bewildered look came over his face. "Wait a second," he said, "that is not an oculus, now that I think about it, that's an . . . " but before he could finish the sentence someone told him he was wanted down in the cafeteria where he worked, so he hastened away and I was le...

I enjoy photography and writing, and sometimes think of myself as a photojournalist. If there is a story to be told with a photograph, I tell it. As a longtime resident of Washington, DC, a lot of my photographs are of this area, and I enjoy writing in the description something about the shot -- it could be a short statement about an equestrian statue in the middle of a park, or a more intimate tale of the mausoleum where Abraham Lincoln's son, Willie, was entombed for the remaining three years of Lincoln's presidency after the boy's death. These photographs are contained in the aptly named "Washington DC" Collection. In addition to "WDC" there are eight other Collections on this page, and two of my favorites are "Paintings" and...