At the end of July Deb & I spent some time in Washington DC and Arlington Virginia checking out the many historical sites and trying to take some photographs of them.  This was a challenge arranging travel plans to spend the golden hours (the two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset) at the right places to get the best shots possible.  It was nice not lugging the longer lenses around for a change!  While in the DC area I used a three lens kit (16-35/2.8, 24-105/4 and 70-200/2.8) with the 16-35 being the lens of choice most of the time. A circular polarizing filter was used for every outside shot and 4X6 ND grad filters were used extensively as well.

The first monument we visited was the U.S. Marine War Memorial in Arlington Virginia and a few images are posted below.

This memorial was dedicated by Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 and is the largest cast bronze statue in the world. The six figures in the statue are 32′ high and the flag pole is 60′. The memorial honours U.S. Marines who have perished in battle since 1775. The statue is a reproduction of the famous photo taken by Joe Rosenthal of five Marines & a Navy Corpsman raising the American Flag at Iwo Jima. The battle at Iwo Jima cost 6,821 Americans their lives and 5,931 of the casualties were Marines (this accounted for almost one third of all the Marine casualties during WWII).

The memorial is located immediately north of Arlington National Cemetary in Arlington VA.

And this last image is my favourite because of the lone veteran saluting in front of the memorial.  Compositionally not the best shot but the human element makes a powerful statement.