Tips for Taking Photos of Monuments

By Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence

Recently, we’ve been taking advantage of the weather to update our photos of some of the local monuments. The metro Washington, DC area is one of the top places for monument photography, but many places have their memorable monuments. We thought this month we would suggest a few tips for monument photography.

Our focus tends to be on outdoor monuments, and we apply many well-known techniques from landscape photography to monuments. Below are a few things that we have found helpful.

1) Be respectful. Don’t go tromping through the landscaping to get the ideal shot, or digging up the flowers planting your tripod. Don’t expect everyone to clear out of your way by putting your tripod up in the middle of a crowd mid-day. Know what the local regulations are on photography, using a tripod, and where you are and aren’t allowed to be. Being obnoxious is a good way to get asked to leave by the local security, and makes people less likely to cooperate with future photographers.

2) Go early. Take a look at some of our monument photos in the web version of this article. Many of them were taken before 6:00 AM, and some of them were taken before sunrise (this of course assumes that the monument you’re visiting allows people there that early). We’ve gone to monuments on the Mall at DC at 4:30 in the morning, and essentially had them to ourselves. Sunrise is a wonderful time to catch distinctively shaped monuments in silhouette or near-silhouette, and the early morning golden light shortly after sunrise can give dramatic light and texture to stone or metal monuments. Sunset would do equally well as sunrise from a lighting standpoint (in the opposite direction), but you may have to deal with crowds, depending on the area. Use Ephemeris or other software, or the local weather service to find out when sunrise is.

3) Bring a tripod. Especially if you are shooting in the dark or sunrise/sunset photos, a tripod will be helpful. If tripods aren’t allowed, consider a beanbag, or put your camera on a rock, banister, garbage can, etc. to brace it (MAKE SURE it is a secure place to put your camera – there is nothing like watching little parts of your camera rolling away as it falls off and smashes to pieces on the ground). If necessary, use high ISO film/digital setting and brace yourself against a wall while taking the photo. Be careful setting up a tripod in crowded settings, and know whether they are permitted (e.g. you will NOT be permitted to set up a tripod on the National Capitol grounds unless you have a permit – and the Capitol police don’t seem to know where to get a permit when you ask them).

4) Try to get some unusual angles and such. Get something other than the cliché shots. Don’t worry about getting the cliché shots (they aren’t that cliché if you don’t have them…), but try and get some close-ups of interesting details, or an angle that strikes you as interesting.

5) Plan your visit. Know when you can get in to the monuments. Know where the parking spaces are (trying to find parking spaces at 4:00 AM is tough – there’s no one around to ask).

6) Don’t forget to have fun, and see the sights while you’re there!

Below are a few of our monument photos from our Washington, DC gallery, which hopefully illustrate some of the points of the article.

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Get there early!  Below are some of our photos with approximate times we took them:

Copyright © 2004, Patty Hankins	This photo was taken at the Vietnam memorial between 4:30 and 5:00 AM.  We went down early to catch the wall while it was deserted, and then caught some sunrise shots at the Lincoln Memorial.
Copyright © 2004, William Lawrence	This photo of the WWII memorial was taken before 5:00 AM.  As I recall, the fountains went on about 5:00 AM, losing the reflection.  Again, we pretty much had the place to ourselves (other than the occasional police patrol) to ourselves until a little after 5:00.

Use a tripod.  This especially goes if you're getting there early, and are shooting in low light.  Make sure that using a tripod is not a problem - some places do not permit them.  If you can't use a tripod, try resting your camera on a wall or similar (just make sure that you're camera is not going to fall off of it!).  Worse comes to worse, use a high ASA film or set the ASA high on your digital camera, and brace yourself against something sturdy to reduce camera shake.  All of the shots on this page were shot with a tripod.

Copyright © 2004, William Lawrence

This shot was taken at sunrise from the edge of the reflecting pool close at the bottom of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was taken on a Slik tripod, about a 6 second exposure.  The photo of the WWII memorial above was about a 30 second exposure.

Try to find some unusual angles.  We have many photos of the monuments, including the cliche ones, but we try to get some other angles too.

Copyright © 2004, Patty Hankins

This close-up of Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln memorial was taken between about 5:00-5:30 AM. While we have shots of the entire memorial, we thought that this one was a little different, and stands out a little more as one of our "keepers".

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