Winter Shooting

This winter has brought record snows to the Washington, D.C. area and that means opportunities for new images. This will be the first of a series of posts describing what I’ve been shooting in the past several months.

My first outing followed the mid-December storm that dumped about two feet on the area so on December 21st, the day of the winter solstice, I decided to try my luck at the Korean War Memorial on the National Mall. Unlike most memorials, the central feature is a statuary garden. A squad of soldiers, sculpted in a size slightly larger than life, is arranged as if the unit was moving through low lying brush on a combat patrol. As usual, I had scouted this location several times but had not yet developed a good concept of how best to photograph them. But my previous visits had all been in good weather. Now, with the snow on the ground, I thought that the fact the soldiers were all wearing ponchos would give the scene a sense of reality not normally seen.

The image above shows a full view of the tableau from the rear, including most elements of the memorial along with the few tourists who were visiting that day. The low angular light of the sun (it was about 30-45 minutes before sunset) gave definition to the soldiers and warmed the scene with just a touch of gold.

The second image isolates three of the soldiers, essentially removing them from the context of the memorial and other clues about the scale of the statues. The intent here was to provide some initial confusion in the mind of the viewer about what exactly is being shown. The panorama format was achieved by merging three images using the photomerge function in Photoshop CS4.




The last image shows a detail of the black granite wall that borders the memorial. Known as the “photographic wall,” it features about 2,500 archival photographs from the conflict sandblasted into the granite. I positioned myself so these images would mix with the ghostly reflections of the stainless steel statues illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun and nearby trees to create an ethereal scene.




For larger versions of these photographs, check my website at www.photographybykent.com. For more details about the Korean War Memorial check this website: http://www.nab.usace.army.mil/projects/WashingtonDC/korean.html. Read more!