Iwo Jima Memorial at Night

Leave it to the United States Marines to storm a hill and capture the best vantage point in the Washington DC area to build the memorial to themselves! In 1954 they dedicated the United States Marine Corps Memorial on a slope in Arlington VA overlooking the entire Washington, DC skyline, with a direct view to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol in the distant background across the Potomac River.

The Iwo Jima Memorial, as it is known, is a 76-ft tall representation of the famous photograph taken in February of 1945 by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, who captured that decisive moment in his Speed Graphic camera as six Marines struggled to plant a metal pipe with an American flag into the rocky summit of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima, a photograph so perfectly composed that it won Mr. Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize and became the most famous photograph of World War II.

The 36-ft. tall soldiers sculpted into this statue are so tall that when a regular 6-ft. tall Marine Lance Corporal climbs a ladder to hoist a flag over the Memorial, he just comes up to the kneecap of one of the soldiers. The canteen on the bronzed soldier’s hip, which in real life only holds one quart of water, is so big that it will hold almost 2 gallons of water!

As beautiful and impressive as the statue is in the daytime, it is even better at night because the soldiers’ faces are individually lit by spotlights mounted on stanchions near the memorial. With your telephoto or zoom lens you can get in tight on the determined faces of these young men as they struggle to plant a metal pipe with a US flag into the ground, even while their comrades are still under fire from Japanese defenders of the island.

After we spend time photographing the Marine Corps memorial, we will walk over to the nearby Netherlands Carillon Bell Tower and capture that iconic image of “The Big Three” monuments, all neatly aligned in a row: Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.

So bring your camera and your medium length and telephoto lenses, plus a tripod, and a flashlight or bring a late model smartphone with good zoom capability to capture dramatic images of these iconic Memorials under the guidance of Washington Photo Safari director and architectural photographer E. David Luria, who will give you tips on lighting composition, white balance and lens usage in the golden hour, blue hour, and nighttime light.