As part of a monthly (well, bi-monthly, in reality) group photography exercise, I and the other participants go out and take pictures on a theme. Whoever picks the theme judges the submissions, and the winner gets to pick the next theme. The current group theme is “Stone”. Therewith, here are two entries I submitted. I still have until the end of the month of April to submit, so I may get out and take a few more that are perhaps more literal.

My first submission is this column and the plaza beneath it on the side of the Lincoln Memorial. I went for a challenge of the white marble because white-on-white is tough to photograph well.

This is a tight shot of the Washington DC World War I memorial. Did you know that there is NO national WW I memorial? There is a national Korean War memorial, a national Vietnam War memorial, and a national World War II memorial, but the WW I memorial on the National Mall is for veterans and the dead of WW I from the District of Columbia. It is on the south side of the National Mall, between the Korean and WW II memorials, tucked back in the trees, and overlooked by most tourists and visitors, and probably even most natives of Washington DC. I like the elegant simplicity of the WW I memorial – none of the architectural and symbolic bombasticism of the WW II or the stilted drama of the Korean War monument. I hold this one up with the Vietnam wall as one of the best. It is very much a piece of its time – the end of a psychological era when death could still be dignified.