The Lincoln Memorial, an iconic DC tourist attraction, is crowded and bustling year round. But in the middle of the night, when it’s empty and quiet, it becomes a very different place. It’s solemn and peaceful in a way that takes you by surprise. I lingered longer than I needed to when taking this photo.

Captured with the Rodenstock 90mm/5.6 HR Digaron (@ f/7.1) and the PhaseOne IQ4-150 “Achromatic” back. 12mm of vertical shift kept the geometry in line. The sharp lens and achromatic back reveal a lot of detail zoomed in at full resolution (full res is downloadable on flickr).

This is a very simple composition, the frame filled with the Memorial from roughly the perspective shown on the $5 bill. The National Parks Service does a superb job lighting the site.

This was a rather opportunistic capture with a small mirrorless camera and a tabletop tripod on a windowsill, just before a late afternoon thunderstorm.

The light always does most of the work in photography, and sometimes it works especially hard.

Telegraph poles with multiple “code lines” were once a common feature along American railroads. They are distinguishable from ordinary power or telephone lines by their multitude of cables, often occupying several crossarms. The wires typically include a power bus plus separate leads for the signals along the route, with various more efficient encodings used as technology improved.

They’ve been mostly supplanted by more modern SCADA systems that don’t require so many individual wires.

Captured with a DSLR and 24mm shifting lens (vertically shifted just a bit) on a hot day in the Mojave desert.

This is a simple composition, characteristic of the early 20th century Precisionist school. There’s little in the frame that isn’t essential. The pylons, wires, and tracks all converge at a vanishing point at the edge of the frame, suggesting, but not showing, a more expansive network of wires, tracks, and, for better or worse, human dominance over nature.

It’s been difficult to separate the new World Trade Center building from that terrible day in 2001, but we now have the benefit of just enough time that we can begin to discuss the tower, as a piece of architecture and as part of the skyline, on its own terms.

It’s generally simpler to capture tall skyscrapers like this from a distant vantage point; the classic photos of WTC are usually shot from Brooklyn or New Jersey. But here I wanted to show it as it’s seen in the neighborhood. The foreground buildings look taller in the frame, but the (much taller) One WTC tower still stands out, given its uncrowded position in the skyline, as if its neighbors maintain a respectful distance.

This was captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR Digaron-W lens. A large image circle allows room for considerable movements, used here to swing to selectively focus on the WTC tower. A polarizer darkened the clear sky a bit, as well as taming some of the highlights reflected off the glass wall of the tower.

The shape of the new One WTC makes the light catch it differently throughout the day and in different weather. I made several exposures at different times before settling on this one.

@crawshaw So isolated though.

@quinn The Bay Area has a remarkable density of former WWII-era military bases that turned out to be radioactive.