Washington D.C. Archives - Light and Landscapes

Sunrise over the National Mall During the Spring Equinox

March 24, 2025 by John Caplis

The Spring Equinox is a special time for photographers in the Washington, D.C. area. This is due to the east-west alignment of the National Mall and the sun rising due east and setting due west on the horizon during the spring and fall equinoxes,. The Netherlands Carilion Bell Tower at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Virginia is a well known photo spot for photographing the full moon when it rises due east on the horizon over the National Mall, due to its spectacular view that features an alignment of the Mall’s most iconic landmarks. This same principle applies here for sunrises on the days leading up to and immediately after the equinox. I recently made a trip down to this spot on March 23, 2025 to photograph the morning twilight and sunrise behind the U.S. Capitol.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) screenshot showing times for civil twilight (6:40 am) and sunrise (7:07 am at 87 degrees on the horizon) and the alignment of the sunrise (gold line) with landmarks on the National Mall.

Once I arrived at the Bell Tower, I went to shoot a quick image of the beautiful twilight sky over the National Mall. I like this particular spot due to the good separation and spacing between the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, at the Capitol dome.

Morning Twilight, 6:30 am, 270 mm. What a beautiful red sky against the well lit landmarks!

I then used the Augmented Reality tool in the Photopills app to fine tune my location in front of the bell tower for the sunrise. I had to move about thirty feet to the left from my twilight location to make sure the sun first appeared slightly to the left of the Capitol. This new location closed the spacing between the landmarks, but gave enough space that the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument were just beginning to overlap. More importantly, it ensured the sun would begin to rise on the left edge of the Capitol dome.

Pointing the camera in my iphone toward the National Mall,, I was able to see where the sun would be rising in relationship to the landmarks in the scene from where I set my camera up using the Photopills app. From where I set up my camera (you can see my lens at the bottom of the image), the sun should follow the diagonal line and rise somewhere between Washington Monument and the Capitol. Keeping my fingers crossed as there can be a small margin of error between what your phone shows and the exact location where things actually happen, but its pretty close.

The following is my series of images for the sunrise over the U.S. Capitol! The first three images are a combination of two exposures for the overall scene and the sun’s disc.

7:09 am. Love the sun bursting through the windows of the Capitol dome.

7:14 am. I was surprised that most of the other photographers had already packed up and were leaving when I took this image. It is a single shot exposed to give a smooth transition from the sun to the rest of the scene, which makes most everything else appear dark, creating a nice contrast of shadowy silhouettes and highlights in the trees.

I love how the light and colors change over such a short period of time between twilight and sunrise.

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Total Lunar Eclipse Over the Washington Monument

March 16, 2025 by John Caplis

The “worm” full moon became a beautiful total lunar eclipse from 2:26 am to 3:31 am on March 14, 2025. During totality, when the moon is fully covered by the earth’s shadow, it turns shades of red and is often called a “blood moon”.

Timeline for the eclipse on 14 March 2025.

I found out from The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app that the lunar eclipse would occur very high in the sky (49 to 43 degrees in elevation) on the southwest horizon (208 – 228 degrees true north) during totality. My goal of putting a widely recognizable landmark next to a close up view of the eclipse would require something that is very tall!

A TPE screenshot showing the elevation and direction of the moon during the peak of totality at the Washington Monument. The red boxes on the timeline denote the direction of the moon for the beginning, peak, and end of totality. The gray line shows the direction of the moon at the peak of totality. The lower grey box shows the elevation and direction of the moon that corresponds with the gray line.

The top of the Washington Monument is approximately 555 feet tall. I used the Photopills app to determine how far away I would need to stand in order to line up the moon over the top of the Washington Monument.

A screenshot of the Photopills app showing the approximate location where you would stand (red pin) at the beginning of totality in order to put the moon immediately over the top of the Washington Monument. From this spot, the moon would be 565 feet high over the monument location (black pin).

The weather forecast for DC was very “iffy” regarding cloud cover. As I departed Northern Virginia at 12:40 am, the skies were crystal clear. We made the 50 minute drive to DC with no traffic and easily found parking on Constitution Avenue very close to the Washington Monument. I used the “AR” function in the Photopills app to fine tune where I should stand to put the eclipse at the top of the Washington Monument for the start of totality. This worked very well, and it put me in the right place at the right time to get the shot. Unfortunately, as soon as we got in place, a thick layer of low clouds began to roll in. Shooting the eclipse became much more challenging. You had to wait for gaps in the clouds to pass in front of the moon to get a usable shot. Often the eclipse would disappear completely and reappear briefly before disappearing again. As the moon was constantly moving across the sky, it became a guessing game where to exactly set up your camera so that the eclipse would be directly over the monument when the eclipse would appear. The cloud moisture in the air also filtered out light from the moon, making the already shadowed moon dimmer. This made getting the moon in sharp focus difficult, and also required higher ISOs and longer shutter speeds than what is usually desired. Despite these challenges, we were able to get a handful of nice images over the hour of totality.

Wide angle shot (29 mm) at the beginning of totality. A nice view of the overall scene, but the view of the eclipse is very small. You could see a shadow of the monument in the clouds being cast by the lights on the ground illuminating the site.

I brought two cameras, one with a 15-35 mm wide angle lens to get the whole monument in the shot with the lunar eclipse, and one with a 100-500 mm telephoto lens to get close up images of the lunar eclipse with the top of the monument. Using a wide angle lens to capture the scene makes the lunar eclipse very small! I still like the shot, as it gives you a sense of the overall view of the scene from the ground level. After getting a few wide angle shots at the beginning of totality, I switched to shooting with the telephoto lens for the rest of the eclipse. My plan was to get a series of shots spanning from the beginning, peak, and end phases of totality. For each of the closeup images to be made, I had to focus and expose for the moon, and then separately focus and expose for the monument. Each pair of images were then manually combined in photoshop for exposure blending and focus stacking in the final image.

Beginning of Totality at 2:28 am. Taken with the 100-500 mm lens at 254 mm.

Near peak totality at 2:55 am. Taken at 500 mm. At this focal length, you can clearly make out aircraft warning lights and the viewing window frames for visitors at the top of the monument.

Near peak totality at 3:04 am. Taken at 300 mm. The eclipse was more evenly lit and was more visible in the shadow areas.

Totality at 3:15 am. Taken at 270 mm. For this composition, I zoomed out to include more of the monument textures, moved my shooting location to place the eclipse lower and to the left, and increased the exposure to bring out some color in the sky and the edges of monument’s shadow. The position of this shadow changed as your shooting location got closer to the lights on the ground. As the moon was gradually descending across the sky from left to right throughout the period of totality, in order to keep the eclipse over the monument, you had to keep repositioning our camera to the left and backwards. This meant continually moving closer to the lights on the ground, which brought the shadow more directly behind the monument. I initially thought the shadow would be too distracting, but for this composition I liked it and I thought it tells more of the story of this cloudy night over DC.

Beyond the end of totality at 3:40 am. Taken at 500 mm. I wanted to get an eclipse shot that featured a sliver of direct sunlight on the moon while the remaining portion was still visibly red in shadow. Notice that the illuminated part of the moon has shifted to the top left, whereas as before the start of totality it was at the top right.

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March Worm Full Moon Rises Over the National Mall

March 10, 2023 by John Caplis

The full moon in March is sometimes referred to as the “Worm Moon”. As the last full moon of winter, it signifies the transition from winter to spring, coming two weeks before the spring equinox. It’s named for the thawing ground, as new worm tracks can now be seen in the soil. For members of the Christian faith, it is also called the “Lenten” moon, and signifies the fasting season of Lent that precedes the Easter. In this image, the Worm Full Moon rises over the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol, with light streaks from passing cars on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which spans the Potomac River and connects the District of Columbia with Northern Virginia. This image also captures another notable event on the National Mall, as the Capitol building is surrounded by scaffolding while the building exterior undergoes renovations.

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Fall Sunrise on the Tidal Basin

November 22, 2021 by John Caplis

The Tidal Basin in the District of Columbia is world famous for it’s yoshino cherry blossoms in the spring. But did you know that the leaves on these trees turn a brilliant reddish-orange color in the fall? Sunrise in the fall is a beautiful time to experience the splendor of these cherry trees without the overwhelming crowds.

Morning sunrise at the Jefferson Memorial.

More trees along the Tidal Basin…

The walk approaching the Martin Luther King (MLK) Memorial.

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Sunset at the Lincoln Memorial during the Fall Equinox

September 23, 2021 by John Caplis

I recently planned a photo trip to capture sunset and twilight images of the Lincoln Memorial around the fall equinox. I chose this period because the sun would be setting due west on the horizon almost directly behind the Memorial as seen from the opposite end of the Reflection Pool. I set up my tripod, along with three other photographers who evidently had a similar idea, at the edge of Reflection Pool in front of the World War II Memorial. I decided to use a Canon 70-200 mm L IS USM II lens to get the proper framing and perspective for the image on my Canon R5 mirrorless camera.

Based on my research using The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app, the sun would go down on this evening (September 19, 2021) right over the top of the Memorial.

The red pin is my tripod location, and the two orange lines represents the sun’s position and elevation on the horizon at the chosen moment on the timeline (thin line), and the sun’s position at sunset (thick line). TPE showed the sun at 270 degrees North and an elevation of 1.5 degrees above the horizon for the start of sunset. As you can see below, this made for a beautiful image as the sun dropped partially below the Memorial’s roof line at just the right moment! I stopped the lens down to f18 to get sunburst as the sun slid half way behind the memorial.

The sunset images were rather difficult to expose due to the intense light of the sun and the backlit cloud layer. I had to take a second shot later on in the sunset-twilight sequence (when the light was more even) which was used to restore the shadow areas of the Memorial.

As the sun slipped below the horizon at the right edge of the Memorial, more colors exploded into the sky from the backlit clouds above the horizon.

This sunset image features a second exposure of the Memorial, taken about twenty minutes later that captured lighting on the front exterior of the building and statue of Lincoln. Portions of this second image were blended to restore detail in the deeply shadowed areas of the sunset image.

As sunset turned into twilight, having the sun set directly behind the Memorial resulted in some nice residual colors in the sky as the light faded and day turned to night.

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Fireworks on the National Mall

August 29, 2021 by John Caplis

f20, 2.7 seconds, ISO 100

What takes a fireworks image “to the next level”? If you guessed having an interesting landscape to anchor the scene, then you are correct! Living in Northern Virginia, one of the things on my photographic “bucket list” has been to photograph the fireworks over the National Mall on the Fourth of July. I chose to shoot the fireworks from a position near the IWO JIMA Marine Corp Memorial in Rosslyn, VA. It provides an elevated viewpoint of the National Mall from across the Potomac River, and most importantly, features a great alignment of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, directly under the fireworks. I have to say the fireworks over the National Mall is a grand display that does not disappoint.

f16, 2.5 seconds, ISO 100

Some of my favorite images were a series of bursts featuring our nation’s flag colors of red, white and blue.

f20, 8.4 seconds, ISO 100

These images were shot using a Canon R5 with an EF adapter and a EF 100-400 mm L IS USM lens. F-stops ranged from f16 to f20, the focal length was set to approximately 110 mm, and the exposures were usually between 3-5 seconds. The fireworks bursts in each image are from single exposures and not composite images. I did take a shot of the illuminated monuments under a dark blue sky before the show started (f16, 4.7 seconds, ISO 100), and then used that as the background layer to blend the fireworks into the scene. This allows you to not overexpose the fireworks while maintaining a well illuminated landscape, while retaining some dark blue tones in the sky. You can see more images from this amazing fireworks display in my gallery “Independence Day Fireworks on the National Mall.”

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Strawberry SuperMoon Rising Over the Thomas Jefferson Memorial

June 29, 2021 by John Caplis

This year’s Strawberry Supermoon (June 24, 2021) featured a fantastic alignment which rose over the Thomas Jefferson Memorial when viewed from the foot of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial.

The timing was also near perfect, as the moon rose during the later part of civil twilight and appeared as a large colorful moon against a pleasing dark blue sky. I used the The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app to preplan this adventure, and the location and timing information can be seen in the screenshot from my iphone below. For this session, the augmented reality function didn’t have the location of the moon rising in exactly the right spot, but the map view of the moonrise worked perfectly.

Capturing a moonrise scene correctly requires taking at least two images, one image exposed for the foreground scene, and a second image that is exposed correctly for the moon. The two images can be stacked and merged later in processing to recreate the scene that our eyes can see, but modern cameras are still not able to capture this dynamic range of light in a single shot. I find the “lighten” blend mode in Photoshop particularly helpful for processing this type of scene. The warm lighting used to illuminate the interior of the Memorial created a nice color connection between the portico and the beautiful yellow moon.

This particular evening was very breezy, and there was a slight chop on the tidal basin. As a result, there was no reflection of the monument on the water. As the moon continued to rise and worked its way over the top of the Memorial, however, a spectacular display of moonshine appeared on the water that draws your eye across the tidal basin and up to the Memorial and the supermoon.

I noticed the light pollution from the surrounding D.C. skyline added a slight magenta undertone to the sky. I liked the effect, as it adds a bit of extra color to the scene and creates a bit of visual separation between the water and the sky.

You can view more “nightscape” images of our National Capital in my DC at Night gallery.

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