Personal Work – Washington DC Temple, August 2009

I have a huge backlog of temple pictures to go through from the trip to Utah.  HUGE.  But when I was at the Washington DC Temple for Art & Cimone’s wedding, I took some more shots of that temple while I was location scouting.  I ended up with a few that I really loved.

Like my prior visit to the DC Temple, I really didn’t think I was going to get any good shots because of the weather and light.  It was late morning when my sister-in-law Emily and I arrived at the temple, and I thought the light was going to be awful.  But, when Emily and I came around the corner of the visitor’s center, I saw this:

So, of course, I kept taking pictures as we walked around the temple.

I like the editing on this next one. I like the original shot, but I like this B&W vintage treatment with the sky blown out around the steeples.  I don’t do vintage or faded stuff much in my portraits, but I like to try it on the temple shots.  It reminds me of my friend Carolyn – she likes faded, vintage editing.

The great thing about the Washington DC Temple, I’ve decided, is that it is so tall. No matter where the sun is, you can find shade and shoot up a the building, and get some really interesting shots. With this next one, I decided to embrace a little bit of sun flare:

I exposed it for the sky, so the building is a little bit dark.  And when I tried lightening up the building, the sun became overwhelming because it was behind the clouds.  So, I took this original photo and played around with it a bit.  This is my favorite of the bunch (and there is a bunch):

My favorite spot to shoot the steeples is on the East side of the temple.  Because it was in full sun, I was sure I wasn’t going to get a shot and was only on that side of the temple to see which staircase I wanted to use for family shots.  Then I looked up.

I may have yelled.  It wasn’t very reverent.  I was just so excited that the sky was so blue and that the temple looked so cool and that I could actually capture it.  I took a bunch of shots and tweaked my exposure compensation up and down so that I could capture as much detail as possible in the sky and the building, but I didn’t really need to.  It just worked.

A different edit:

And a few different angles:

Such fun.  As always, if you would like a print or a digital file to download, you can visit my temple gallery by clicking here.

Related posts:

1. Personal Work – Washington DC LDS Temple (Part 2)
2. Personal Work – Washington DC LDS Temple (Part 3)
3. Personal Work – Washington DC LDS Temple (Part 1)