This image is very different for me in two different ways.
- It broke my instagram silence. Which I was not planning on doing for a while but it was such a good sunrise on Saturday that I couldn’t help myself.
- Because its of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A place I haven’t photographed in YEARSSSS.
Let me explain. I think most of you found me because of my Vietnam Veterans images that went viral a couple years back. If you don’t know what I mean, you can see one here and the other one here. When that happened it was probably one of the most surreal moments in my life. I had no idea those images would be shared or even liked as much as it did. And I’m forever grateful for it. Those images really changed my photography career in the best ways possible.
And for a long time I had this fear in my head that I could never go back and take a better image than I had in 2012. 6 years later and I’m still not over it and I walk past the memorial almost on a weekly basis. Its kind of nuts the kind of tricks your brain can play on you.
So I finally did. I went down the the Vietnam Veterans memorial and tried to capture the sunrise as best as I could. It started off with me taking the same exact images I had before but then I started getting creative. I started thinking about all the things that I’ve learned about composition and my new favorite techniques to capture an unique cityscape. And I felt as excited and inspired as I ever have about photographing this beautiful memorial. I learned that I can’t let fear of not being good enough hold me down from doing what I love.
My camera settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/160th of a second at ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.