Library of Congress Great Hall: Cropped

The Library of Congress of the United States in downtown Washington, D.C. is the largest library in the world. It provides access to millions of books, audio & video recordings, photos, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Home of the U.S. Copyright Office, it is the research library of the U.S. Congress and of anyone who gets a free library card. The Library of Congress physically occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill: The John Adams Building, James Madison Building, and the original Thomas Jefferson Building. Across the street from the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Capitol Building, the Thomas Jefferson Building of the LOC was completed in 1897.

The opulent building of Italian Renaissance style architecture is functional as well as being a national Temple of the Arts. Jefferson’s beliefs in the direct link between knowledge and democracy led to the comprehensive collecting policies of today’s Library of Congress. The elaborately decorated structure was built from fifteen varieties of marble, four hundred thousand cubic feet of granite, bronze, gold, and mahogany and employed more than forty American artists and sculptors to carry out the monumental design. It underwent restoration in the late 1980s. It’s hard not to be impressed walking around the Great Hall. The Roman Goddess Minerva, the guardian of civilization, is portrayed in the arched mosaic climbing the stairs leading to a spectacular view of the Main Reading Room. My son shared with me of a fun fact he learned from his school field trip: Minerva’s feet appear to be pointed in your direction as you both climb the stairs on the right and descend on the left. After seeing it for myself, the impressive optical illusion definitely left me scratching my head.

The intricate details of the work of the artisans who built this monument is nothing short of breathtaking. I wanted to capture this room in its entirety. With a panoramic stitch, there are no limits in perspective so it’s easy to get carried away in composing the photo. I ended up shooting photos of the entire room from that perspective on the second floor: from the immediate columns on either side, to the ground floor below, and stunning ceiling above. The end-result will eventually be a spherical panorama or “little planet”. While I am fascinated with surreal photography, I wanted to also capture a less eye-bending image of the LOC Great Hall and showcase the artisans’ precision in this more traditional composition.

While the photo makes it seem like I had the place to myself, it’s a popular tourist destination in Washington, D.C. Like other iconic DC monuments, there were a lot of people. For over an hour and a half I took my composite photos, having to pan to different spots where there were no people. Similar to the method I used in my DC Cherry Blossoms in peak bloom photo, in the busier areas I shot many images from a single position. I manually blended the sections of each photo with no people to get my final composite images for the panoramic stitch. I also bracketed the exposures because the camera doesn’t have the dynamic range of the human eye to balance the dark shadow areas as well as the bright windows, illuminated columns, and arches above. In total, it took nearly 500 exposures to make the 40 composite images that made this VAST Photo.

This ultra high-resolution photo allows for making extremely large fine art prints and produces a hyper-realistic look unlike that of traditional fine art photography. It provides the viewer unrestricted access to the most intricate details of the scene. On a personal level, this is one photo I’d love to print as a large mural so I could take the time to examine it up close and see the different elements that are easily missed when visiting, like the owl nearly hidden in plain sight. Can you find it?