The Lincoln Monument provides an excellent of the Washington Monument at dawn. Not only do you get the monument silhouetted by the sun and a red sky (if you’re lucky) you also get the reflection of the moment in the appropriately named reflecting pool. You can also use the Lincoln Monument as I did here to create a frame for your photo.
I did a little bit of editing work in Lightroom to make the image pop more. Rather than using the auto settings for white balance I used Daylight which pumps up the orange in the sky nicely. I didn’t want to completely remove the blue from the sky though so I added a Linear Gradient but applied a Luminance Range with it so that the lightest part of the sky got an added blue tint to it.
I made two other smaller edits as well. The first was to very slightly lighten up the reflection of the monument in the water so that the silhouette of the person didn’t merge into it and the second was to clone out an ugly spotlight that drew the eyes and distracted from the image.
Discover more from Veristopia
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
