Finding a Stage (2 of 2)
This is a postscript to the “Finding a Stage” (first of 2) blog post.
Can you spot the wedding photographer at the lower right of this image? On any weekend morning, you can count on seeing at least half a dozen of these blissful-to-be tableaus at the Lincoln Memorial. The bride is always radiant, the groom faintly embarrassed by the spectacle, the photographer ever barking a stream of commands: “now tilt your chin down and toward me … now lift your right arm … now look natural …”
Here we see the groom’s lonely hand holding the tip of the veil, ready for the command to let it fall gracefully and effortlessly to the marble floor.
I thought it was a funny shot, and Abe did too.
But we’re talking about finding the right stage. Here there are two. The wedding photographer – I have to guess a bit here because I didn’t inspect the site afterwards – likely had the shaft of the Washington Monument behind the bride’s back. (Let’s leave aside the phallic imagery for now.) Or maybe the only background staging was the bride’s falling veil backlit agains the morning sunlight, which as you can see was streaming straight into the Memorial.
I can speak more confidently about my stage, because we can all see it. It’s not exactly the same stage as the graduates tossing their caps, but close. The graduation shot was angled from the south side of the plaza below the Memorial, looking northwest toward Lincoln’s statue and the lip of the Memorial floor. For the newlywed shot, I walked about twenty steps north on the same plaza and turned so I was now looking west/southwest into the Memorial. This is why the relationship between Lincoln and the pillars is totally different in the two shots. We’ve moved from stage left (graduation shot) to stage right (bridal veil).
Here is an overhead shot from Google Earth to show what I’m talking about. The Lincoln Memorial is the oblong on the left (west) side of this image looking north). The white vertical strip bordering the right of the oblong is the first set of marble steps coming down from the floor of the Memorial’s interior. Then, moving right (east), you have a set of granite steps in beige, and below that, moving further right (east), you see a plaza with eight squares. (The thin lines separating the squares are actually steps down as you move east.) For the graduates’ shot, my viewing angle from the plaza was the yellow line on the south, looking west/northwest and up toward the entrance of the Memorial. For the bridal shot, my angle was the yellow line on the north, looking slightly southwest toward the entrance.
Here’s the staging point: With all the action going on at any time at the Lincoln Memorial, the photographer who wants Lincoln overlooking his subjects has at least these two choices of staging. It’s a ten-second walk between the two stages, and you the photographer – well, you’re the director. It’s your stage and your show! Time to get the shot.
(Technical stuff: Both of these images were taken with a 100-400mm zoom lens. The graduates shot was at 290mm and the bride at 400mm, which is why Lincoln’s face is a bit bigger in the bride shot. The shutter speed on the graduates was only 1/100th; if I’d known they were about to fling their caps, I would have cranked up the shutter a little faster.)
Here are a few more of my Monumental DC photos where you can see how the idea of finding a stage – and waiting for the actors (or the action) to arrive – helps compose a better shot. (Click on the thumbnails to scroll through the slides.)
