A U.S. Park Ranger riding horseback down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House in Washington, DC. This photograph captured in September, 1999 was taken by Jim Epler during the fall in Washington, DC the North facade of the White House on Pennyslvania Avenue. It is cataloged under the terms street photography, people, cities, animals, landmarks and urban scenes in this photography database.
The image was exposed on 35mm Kodak Tri-X 400 black & white film stock using a Pentax Asahi Spotmatic II camera with a Asahi Pentax 55mm f/2 lens stopped to f/16 and exposed at a speed of 1/125th of a second.
Photographer Comments: I remember walking down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for an interesting place to photograph the White House. I felt that most of the vantage points were rather typical, even boring in fact until I saw the park ranger approaching me on horseback.
I quickly switched from my 135mm to my 55m lens, stopped down my lens to capture the widest depth of field possible, composed the scene in my viewfinder and waited until the subject was framed by the foliage on the left and right before tripping the shutter. I remember wondering how the shot would turn out because I thought the ranger and horse had blocked the sightline to the White House. Luckily, the mounted officer was framed perfectly in relation to the background elements.
This creative process is a good example of the challenges of street or documentary photography; that of anticipation, technical effect, alignment and execution. One needs to be able to anticipate an action or event before it happens, use technical knowledge to set the fstop and shutter speed on the lens and camera accordingly, align and focus the subject in relation to other elements in the scene and execute the shot in time to accuately reflect one's personal visualization of the moment.
Additionally, search phrases or terms that people actively seeking pictures on the Internet related to this particular topic might include the words officer, cop, mounty, white house, park ranger, mountie, secret service, United States President, policeman, police, Washington DC, patrol, mounted police, horseback and horse, so they are included on this details page as a way to improve the photograph's profile in searches and Web queries.
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