A Photographic Tribute for Memorial Day

Photo by Dr. Matthew Brink.  Click image to see larger.

A friend, Dr. Matthew Brink, posted a photo on Facebook today that reminded me of a photo I took 20 years ago.  His composition includes the Washington Monument reflected at the far end of the wall.  Very cool.

So, I dug up my old photo and scanned it this evening.

I took the photo below at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC about 20 years ago.  This is old-school FILM photography.  No photoshop.  No editing at all.  All effects were done with the camera.  It is a double-exposure.  For those that don’t know, it means I took one photo, cocked the shutter without advancing the film, and took a second shot over the first one.  When doing this, you have to compensate the exposures so you don’t burn out the image.  Back then there was no telling how the shot came out until I got it back from the developer.

For this photo, the first shot was of the wall with the names of those lost in Vietnam.  I angled to create a divergent pattern of names.  Then I moved over to a statue at the memorial and took a vertical shot so the names would emanate from above like rays of sunshine over the soldiers.  Some photo knowledge and a bit of luck yielded this result.

I thought it was cool back then… and still do.  🙂

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his/her life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to and including my life.”

Some do end up making the ultimate sacrifice for a cause bigger than themselves.  I cannot adequately articulate the gratitude and pride I feel for those noble souls.

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