Air Force Memorial

One of the many advantages of living across the river from the nation’s Capitol is the abundance of memorials within either a short walk or drive. For example, when training last year for the Richmond Marathon, which bills itself as “America’s Friendliest Marathon”, I would start out early in the morning and jog past the recently dedicated Air Force Memorial, the Pentagon, the Lincoln Memorial and then onto Hains Point. It is a long jetty/island in the middle of the Potomac River that has a golf course and until recently, my favorite piece of artwork, The Awakening, a beautiful statue of a giant entombed in the earth. It’s quite remarkable and makes for quite a sight, especially when coming upon it at night.

Following a long trip around the tip of Hains Point, my route would the bring me back across the river, past the Arlington National Cemetery, the Iwo Jima sculpture and the Netherlands Carillon and finally, back home.

Ok, back to the post at hand. Since we live only a couple minutes drive from the Air Force Memorial, I went there one evening to take some photographs. Here’s one of my first shots of the night. Due to a rain storm that had passed through earlier, there were some fantastic clouds and setting the WB to shade helped create this fantastic orange glow.

I continued walking around the site and set up shop on a sitting wall that runs most of the site’s length. At this point some tourists, or perhaps locals, showed up and I quickly switched from wide angle to telephoto.

Despite the long shutter speed, this couple held still long enough to make a decently sharp exposure with the U.S. Capitol in the background.

Finally, I tired of the tourists and looked for a completely different angle and found a glass wall that had etchings of jets on it. It seemed quite appropriate for the site and I slid my wide angle back on and got as low to the ground as possible.

This last image is taken from directly beneath the spires, looking straight up. The strange lines are caused by the spotlights highlighting the spires and casting shadows.