BTS: The story behind this shot

What a crazy week it’s been, my thoughts and prayers are with all the families and loved ones of the victims of last weeks tragic aircraft accident. My son and I love going to gravelly point and watching the airplanes take off and land. We were silent watching as the news was unfolding, I couldn’t believe how close to home this accident was. A special thanks to all the first responders for a wonderful job they do.

This week, I wanted to share the story behind this shot. There’s moments in life that have no explanation they just happen for a reason. I wanted to end 2024 with a bang, I had been doing my research and found one of Virginia’s tallest waterfalls. An 80 foot wonder hidden near Roanoke, Virginia. On December 30th, I woke up at 3am and headed on my way to capture a sunrise over the overlook of this waterfall. It was a 3 and a half hour long car ride so I knew if I wanted to be there before the sunrise I had to leave very early. The car ride didn’t actually feel that bad I drove and got there about 30 min before the sun was suppose to rise. I gather my things and my plan was to go over to the overlook and set up my tripod and camera. As I was walking up to the overlook I noticed that most of the area was block off by a large fence it got me kind of worried that I wouldn’t be able to set up and have a good angle. I got to overlook and to my surprised there was such a beautiful scenery surrounding the waterfall I couldn’t have ask for a better set up. Looking from the overlook I could see straight down as the hill was super steep. What I did not realize about the overlook is that the rocks around it where actually in a slope pointing downwards towards the bottom of the waterfall. I set my tripod down on the edge and I started to place my camera and securing it on the tripod. There was 2 mistakes I made along the way that I did not notice while I was doing this. First, I didn’t secure the camera well and second I did not have a strap around it for extra security. My camera fell from my tripod and started rolling down the steep hill. I wanted to jump right after it not going to lie but that’s when I started to survey the area a bit more and because it had rain the night before I felt like the rocks would be a bit slippery. I also have a tear on my knee and can’t really do anything strenuous because the pain is really bad. I started to see if there was another way down and found a safer way to get down but the problem was the fence. After trying to find a way around the fence and found nothing I ended up calling my wife to tell her the situation. She call her brother and he drove 3 hours to meet me and hope he could go to the bottom. Once he arrived we began to see how to get around the fence and we found a gap that we could open and he could squeeze through. He put on safer shoes and started to make his way down. He went all the way down and didn’t see the camera and I showed him the way it went down and he started following the way and found it in a bush. I was glad he was able to find it but I was worried because he decided to come up the difficult way through the steep hill. I knew one wrong step and it could turn deadly so I started to tell him to please go the other way around but he said he couldn’t go back because of how he had come up to retrieve the camera. He made a quick run up the hill and made it to the top. The whole time my heart was racing quite fast and felt such an awful anxiety it was a dangerous and reckless decision but he did it anyway. He gave me the camera and by this time it was already noon and lighting was terrible, I had just spend my whole day waiting for help. I was planning to be back home by 12 but everything went all wrong and I was so upset. I check my camera and I was praying that everything was going to check out ok and to my surprise the camera and lens were completely fine. A few scratches but nothing major that I could see and that’s when I check the ND filter I put on the front of my lens and that was ruined. I was thankful nothing else had happen and started to make my way back. As I was driving back though I started to go through everything that had happen and I was super upset with how the day had gone. The only thing I was glad about was that camera was ok. I talked with my son and I ask him if he wanted to go to DC the next day to try to make up for the day I had. We made plans and we agreed on where we would go to take pictures. We map it out and the next day we woke up early to head to the metro. We got there in time for the sunrise and headed to where we were going to go.

My son and I have been exploring DC for a couple months now, he has experience quite a lot but there’s one place we have loved to visit time and time again. That place is the Abraham Lincoln memorial. My son started learning about presidents last year and he always came back home and would tell me what president they had learn about. Then one day he ask me a question he said “when you learn about the U.S presidents in school, who was your favorite president?” I had never really been ask so I didn’t really have an answer for him but I did tell him “well based on what i’ve read I think I would say Abraham Lincoln and Barrack Obama.” He said “hey, that’s not fair you have to choose one.” I told him “well if I can only pick one then I would choose Abraham Lincoln. He said “good choice” which made me laugh so I ask him, “what about you who is your favorite president?” he immediately responded well I like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. So I told him “hey, you only said one he laughed and said “well if I have to pick one I would say Abraham Lincoln.” It was from this moment I came up with the idea to take a photo of him in front of Abe Lincoln statue, as I was inspired by a photo I had seen of a photographer who made his friend dress up as the gringe and took a picture of him in front of Abe’s statue. I thought what a great idea let me see if I can add some more natural light and I could make this a memory for my son. I said to myself this is how I make it up with everything that happen today. We set out early in the morning, on a mission, to catch the sunrise over DC. I had timed us perfectly but there was something I didn’t take into account and was the amount of walking we would be doing. I knew getting to the Lincoln memorial was the number one priority because I wanted that ray of sun coming through the arches. Luckily, my son was a great sport and walked all of that distance with me and said he had a lot of fun and on top of that we got many great photos.

I am thinking of changing the format of this blogs to see if I can add photos of our adventures and share a behind the scenes so you can easily follow along.. I will be working on this hopefully it doesn’t take me long, I just need to do research first as I struggle with technology sometimes. If you are interested in supporting my photography jouney I have a donate button on the main page. I do have print available at https://capturemoment5.darkroom.com. I am not selling them on here because I don’t have a printer and this company provides me my prints and handles shipping as well. New prints coming soon! If you would like my picture as a mouse pad, clock, pillow cover or even post cards then head over to https://www.redbubble.com/people/Capturemoment5/shop?asc=u. They work with me to do a similar product like prints but they do it on some home essentials, I could also make T-Shirts with them, if you are interested in something like that please feel free to let me know. I have been working hard on making this website function better I did not like the way it look and knew it needed a full restart. I love how is turning out, I hope you love it as well. I have updated my portfolios as well, I had a great start to this year with some amazing shots that i’ve captured. I am really putting all my knowledge to the test and the results have been amazing. I am happy where I am at with my photography but I know I still have a lot more to learn. I created a dog portfolio for all of the dog lovers out there. This portfolio features only both of my dogs at the moment I have an idea in mind, I am thinking of walking around the neighborhood and asking neighbors if I could photograph there dogs during golden hour. If you are in the Northern Virginia area and would love a portrait of your dog contact me, I have a contact form at the bottom of the page.