Morning twilight near the Jefferson Memorial along the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. My first time in the nation's capital shooting photos, I got here at 5am and drove around searching for a place to park legally (all the signs warn of towing and ticketing happening to cars before 9am. I ended up parking far away and hiking in just to be safe. Randomly, I ended up on this grassy berm under some cherry blossom trees and decided to set up and wait. As morning twilight revealed the expected location of the sun glow on the horizon, it was entirely lucky it lined up directly behind the memorial from this position. By sunrise, this 20 yard stretch became a veritable land grab by photographers, iPhone wielding joggers, engagement couples, moms with children in their Sunday duds, all of us shoulder to shoulder, in hopes of documenting the short-lived white confetti drizzling from these venerable trees.
A photographer next to me brought and deployed continuous LED panels to light the trees, oblivious to the fact that nobody around him was excited about his stray light in their shots. So, many of my takes were ruined by harsh, uneven, bluish light; ultimately, I had to ask him to turn them off for a couple of minutes so I could grab my shot, then I got out of there. The nerve.
Lens is the D FA90mm f/2.8 on the 645Z. I used 2-exposure bracketing(0 & -1.3) to control the highlight band along the rotunda. 2 levels of focus bracketing were applied to catch the cherry blossoms in reasonable focus.
I was in town for business working an all day conference and only had 3 focal lengths, a flimsy travel tripod, and needed to be done before 7am each morning, so the mission to squeeze in some photography was quite a challenge.
Hope you like this one!
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