No trip to Southwestern South Dakota would be complete without a visit to Mount Rushmore. Is there anything else in South Dakota?
Anyway, pay the $10, walk up to the monument viewing area, and take a photo. I’m a tourist and I’ done. Time for lunch.
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The monument viewing area provides for a great place to capture the four presidents. This image is shot from a side viewing area that all the tourists seem to ignore.
To spice it up a bit, making the photo something more than a tourist snapshot, I shot the presidents with flags in front. I really shouldn’t talk about shooting presidents, so I’ll only photograph them.
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I angled my camera in such a way that my image did not include tourist heads.
This is a nice change of pace. But what can we do to make it even more interesting. We decided to take a much less traveled route to Mount Rushmore, traveling down one-lane roads with many hairpin turns. Every so often we would come to a tunnel (these tunnels are barely one car width). When we looked through the tunnel to make sure there were no cars coming at us, we noticed something very interesting. Presidents!
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They are so small but if you look carefully you can see all four presidents.
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Adding some context (motorcyclists) spices up the picture a bit.
We’d drive a little more and reach another tunnel.
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We are quite a bit closer which allows for the presidents to be larger in the image. I like the tunnel framing them.
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Again, to add some perspective and additional interest, I included a silhouette of a car (SUV).
And then we got to the last tunnel.
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Ever to contortionist, Kas makes sure se gets the perfect angle. I was getting bored of taking photos of presidents through a tunnel – this subject was far more interesting, don’t you think?
Then, with Mount Rushmore looming, we stopped on the side of the road, scaled a rocky hill, and took this shot.
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The side of the road wasn’t good enough. We had to scale rocks to get to an optimal position – so the noses don’t touch! Kas was right, of course.
Now we have interesting shots of a very common scene. The goal is to make the common, uncommon.
Remember, it’s all about the light!
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