I write this on Remembrance Day, 2024, a day observed in most Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to honour armed forces members who have lost their lives in the line of duty. A minute’s silence at 11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month coincides with the end of fighting at that precise time in 1918.
Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne. August 2016
I’m no fan of war and the terrible waste of lives, both fighters and civilians. It is tragic that the lessons of the ‘Great War’ weren’t learnt all those years ago, and that even today powerful men (nearly always men), sitting safely in offices far from any threat, start wars and send young soldiers to do their bidding in the name of, at the end of the day, nothing more than ego.
I am a fan of monumental buildings though, and in Australia there are few as monumental as Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. Positioned at the far end of central Melbourne’s main thoroughfare, and thankfully unencumbered by skyscrapers, the Shrine holds court over the city.
I remember having the idea for this picture on a previous visit. Most pictures of the building naturally take in all of it. What I noticed was that many of the amazing details of the architecture tend to get lost in those ‘big picture’ perspectives. That said, it wasn’t until I started working on this photo that I realised just how Roman the front portico looks when isolated from the whole.
I timed my visit in the hope of getting good light towards the end of the day. In situations like this I use an app called LightTrac to work out where the sun will be at what time of the day and plan accordingly. The app doesn’t plan cloud cover of course, so sometimes that preparation works and sometimes it doesn’t; on this occasion I struck gold. The sun setting to the right of the picture was angled just enough to create a beautiful ‘fade’ across the pillars.
What I couldn’t have planned for was the lovely sprinkling of couples sitting on the steps, taking in the last rays of sunlight on this late winter’s day. It took about 70 shots over half an hour before things settled down into a combination I was happy with, but in the end I couldn’t have staged them better if I’d been able to. The one person walking across the scene breaks things up just enough.
It’s always nice when a plan works out!
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