By André Costantini
A few weeks ago on route to Virginia, fellow photographer Ken Hubbard and I stopped for a few nights in Washington DC. We were seemingly batting 1000 between having just missed the peak of the cherry blossoms, enduring rainy and almost freezing weather and being in our nations capitol on the brink of a shutdown.
Despite the perfect conditions, we set out to make some pictures. I relegated myself to one camera and one lens. The Tamron 18-270 on a Nikon D7000. This was compact enough, I didn't even need to carry a camera bag, I just put it in my jacket pocket. OK, so it was a big pocket, but it did the trick and kept the camera dry until I was ready to shoot some images.
We arrived just as the sun was going down by the basin near the FDR memorial and the Jefferson monument. The rain subsided for a few minutes and there was some semblance of color and texture in between weather patterns. I took the first image of the Washington Monument through the almost expired cherry trees, but out of focus and silhouetted it worked out fine. There was enough context to let you know where I was and what time of year it might be. The camera settings were ISO 1250 f5.6 100mm 1/30 of a second.
About an hour later and a lot more rain, after having walked around the FDR memorial I noticed a puddle at the edge of the basin in which the Washington Monument was reflected. By putting the camera at the edge of the puddle at a very low angle it approximated the position of the basin. With the addition of Ken's off camera flash which he triggered manually during the long exposure, I made this image. The illusion is created because the flash is illuminating the tree and creating the reflection which seems to go as far as practically the base of the Monument. But in reality the puddle is maybe three feet long. The placement of the camera is what creates this perception. It was taken at ISO 250 18mm f8.0 and exposed for 1 second. Because the white balance was set for the available light on the monument, the addition of the flash rendered the cherry blossoms blue which worked nicely against the orange sky creating a surreal but beautiful effect all done in camera.
So don't let some rain get you down. We debated about whether to weather the storm but the image would not have been possible if the puddle didn't exist and the clouds in the sky hadn't reflected the city's light. Sometimes using what nature gives us, can create some unexpected surprises, the likes of which we never would have thought possible.
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