Ghosts in the Night
During a December weekend in Washington, D.C., I finally had the chance to do something I had wanted to do for a long time: head out with a camera after dark and see what the city felt like at night.
December in D.C. has a particular character. Cold, but usually not harsh. The kind of chill that calls for a warm coat and a steady pace. The air is brisk, the sidewalks quieter, and the usual crowds thin out quickly once evening settles in. That combination alone changes the experience of the city.
After dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill with friends, I returned to my hotel room to grab my camera and monopod. Then, I headed out toward the National Mall. The walk was relaxing and unhurried. The cold kept most people indoors, which gave the monuments room to exist without distraction.
Along the way, I passed several familiar landmarks, but the images here focus on The Three Servicemen Statue, located just off the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The statue sits slightly apart from the wall itself, positioned as if the three figures are looking toward it. That placement has always felt intentional and powerful. It connects the individual human presence of the soldiers to the long list of names etched in stone nearby.
The Three Servicemen statue has always stood out to me. Not because of scale or drama, but because of the faces. There is emotion and focus in their expressions, a sense that their attention is fixed somewhere beyond the moment. At night, that feeling deepens. With the city receding into darkness, the figures seem less like bronze and more like soldiers still on patrol, lost in time and in theater.
I wanted to use the darkness as part of the composition. Let the night fall away and allow the faces to emerge on their own terms. Framed tightly and isolated from the surroundings, the sculpture takes on a different tone. Less like a monument and more like a moment. Something suspended between memory and reflection.
These images are not about documenting a place as much as they are about how that place feels when everything slows down. Walking through the memorial area at night, with only the sound of footsteps and distant traffic, the statues seem to carry a weight that is easy to miss during the day.
There is a stillness there that lingers. A sense that the stories tied to these figures are never fully at rest. In the quiet of a December night, they feel closer. Not haunting in a dramatic sense, but quietly persistent. Like ghosts in the night, waiting to be noticed.
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Technical Notes:
The images in this post were captured using a Canon DSLR and a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. A monopod was used for stability, along with a small amount of fill light to gently lift detail without overpowering the surrounding darkness. Processing was done in Lightroom, where the images were converted to monochrome with subtle vignetting applied. Noise reduction was used selectively to preserve texture while maintaining the overall mood. All images are presented in a 3:2 aspect ratio.
