I gotta give it to this mom. Even though she commutes into Washington DC every day, which takes hours each way from Northern Virignia, she chose go back there on a Sunday for fall family photos at the Lincoln Memorial.

Shooting at a busy tourist spot is challenging but dang it’s a blast!

We got there around 3 pm, with the sun just starting to swing around the left side of the memorial on its way to set behind Arlington Cemetary. The crowds were steady, but not the endless stream of buses you see in the summer.

Funny thing about the Lincoln Memorial. For an incredibly visited place, it has a lot of ‘road less travelled’ spaces for photography.

Let’s start with the building.

Everyone (rightfully) crowds to the front of the building where the Lincoln statue resides; however, the building has three other glorious sides — filled with blue white columns and marble — columns that turn a warm yellow at sundown — that are often empty.

On this day, it was pretty windy, so only the South side worked for us.

I spent about a half hour almost alone with this family. It was open and quiet and wind free and amazing.

According to the dad there were some others who wanted to take photos there and waited for me — thankfully I didn’t see them, as I would have felt bad. I was definitely being greedy.

There are also two tiers of stairs at the memorial. The first set, leading up to the front of the building, are filled with people. However, the second set, closer to the reflecting pool, really minimize the crowds and have a tendency to be pretty open.

Best of all there is the beautiful foliage of the mall. At the end of the shoot we walked over to the north side of the building and found this glorious fall foliage.

Every time I go into DC I remind myself that it really is pretty awesome.