The Lighthorseman

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The Lighthorseman is one of many war memorials around Adelaide -- and one of the better known ones. More than any other memorial, this statue recalls and honors Australia's cavalry tradition, which is quite the equivalent of that celebrated by the United States. (There's actually another memorial, about a half mile away, on the corner of the Adelaide parklands, where green fields stretch away from the city: it's a plain, solid stone horse trough, and it's the memorial to the horses who served, and died -- it's not so well-known, nor so photogenic, but that's the one which brings a lump to the throat of horse-lovers, like myself.) This image was very difficult to capture, because of the sun angle: the challenge was to get detail from the soldier's face to appear, at the same time as correctly exposing the rest of the shot. The photo was then cropped and sized -- you may not realize there's a set of traffic lights just out of frame at bottom left! And quite a lot of enhancement was done at the software stage, to make the most of this dramatic picture. Photo by Mel, 2007.