I just loved that I was all alone. Perhaps the only one crazy dedicated enough to venture outside to ply his craft.

Here, the four person honor guard created by sculptor Zenos Feudakis stands nobly in the driving snow.

On the north end of the memorial is a “Glass Contemplation Wall” that honors fallen airmen. There are several planes etched on the glass. This shows just one of the planes, looking through the glass toward the three spires which represent the three core values of the Air Force – “integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all that is done”.

Every time I photograph this monument I find it a challenge and suspect I’ll be back again.

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.