Last week on Saturday I met some fellow photographers from my photo club to photograph the annual illumination memorial at Antietam battlefield. Each year the national parks service lights an luminary for each of the 23,000 casualties from the Antietam Civil War battle.

The park is open to the public to drive through the fields. We received a special permit so we could walk the fields to photograph.

I haven't done much night photography, so I did a great deal of experimentation and learning that night. I shot a large number of frames, but only found a handful of images I liked. I did learn several lessons that will help me in the future.











The National Parks service produced a video of this year's Illumination and the video team did a nice job.


This year we arrived at the park several hours before sunset, and left the park near 11PM. It made for a long night but I'm already looking forward to next year. I have some new ideas on how I want to shoot the event next year.

October 21st marked the 150th anniversary of the battle of Balls Bluff in Leesburg Virginia. This was the second major battle of the civil war. The battle started off as a reconnaissance mission across the Potomac river to check the Confederate encampments. The battle ended with the Confederates driving the Union forces back into the Potomac and the death of President Lincoln's close friend Col. Edward D. Baker. Baker was a Senator from Oregon at the time and remains the only US Senator ever killed in battle.

One of the challenges of shooting in infrared is the materials in the clothing will give you different colors depending on the material used. So all of the Union troops start looking like Confederate grey depending on the material used. Here is a shot of Col. Baker in color.


I attend the reenactment with a fellow photographer and history buff Don Johnson. It was nice being able to shoot the event with someone that has studied the history of the battle.









I shot more color photos than I normally do at a civil war event. Normally I only shoot color for reference shots, but today I shot and processed more color photos. I probably ended up shooting more color than normal because of the fall foliage. I liked how this one came out in color.
You can view the entire set of photos at the following link Civil War Balls Bluff. As always if you are a reenanctor and want a copy of the photo, please just let me know and I can send them to you.

Yesterday I made a trip down to Fredericksburg and was rained out. When I woke this morning the skies were still grey and threatening more rain. Right around 11AM I looked outside and saw that the clouds were breaking and I knew this was going to be an excellent day for infrared photography. I made a quick decision to head north towards Gettysburg.

When I arrived, I was very glad I made the trip. The clouds were great and I was able to visit some parts of the park I haven't had a chance to photograph yet.






I'm glad I was able to be flexible with my schedule and I feel like I had a very productive weekend working on my Civil War project.

On Saturday I drove a couple of hours south to Fredericksburg Virginia to visit one of the many Civil War battlefields located in the area. This was my first trip to this area and I primarily went as a scouting trip for future visits.

I arrived in the morning to grey skies and the threat of rain. I was hoping for better weather, but since this was just a scouting trip I decided to tour the battlefields to get acquainted to potential photographic opportunities for a future trip.

In this small area of land, four major battles occurred.

Battle of Fredericksburg
The December 13, 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg is remembered today, as one of the greatest Union defeats of the Civil War.

Battle of Chancellorsville
The April-May 1863 battle is known as Confederate General Robert E. Lee's greatest victory.

Battles of Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House
The May 5-6, 1864 Battle of the Wilderness began a six week campaign that began the bloodiest campaign in American History. On May 8, 1864 the Union army seized initiative by moving from Wilderness to Spotsylvania Court House. That shift changed the course of the war as the armies began the road to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House.

When I arrived at the Fredericksburg Battlefield visitors center, they mentioned there was going to be an artillery demonstration at the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield. So I went there first before the rain started.






It started to rain during the demonstration and soon after the rain came down hard the rest of the afternoon. I was only able to take a couple of photos on this trip. But I feel well prepared for my next trip.


Here is a video of the demonstration.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. When I moved to the east coast I quickly discovered an interest in the Civil War and its battlefields. Over the years I have been researching and studying the subject. I'm also currently working on a book project to photograph the local battlefields using my infrared converted camera.

On July 21st in 1861 the first battle of Manassas / Bull Run was fought in Manassas Virginia. This past weekend a series of events were held in the town of Manassas to commemorate this historic event. So with a couple of cameras in hand I went to photograph the reenactment of the first major land battle of the Civil War.

I have many photos that I like and I'm currently still sorting through them all.



I'm tentatively calling the one above "Paying the Butchers Bill."



The temperatures for most of the day were in the high 90's and some people said over 100 and some points. I was very impressed with the reenactors as they kept in character and full dress through out the day.


It was a great day and I'm looking forward to the next events on the Civil War Sesquicentennial calendar.



I have been reviewing my photos from the weekend and right now the following photo is my favorite from the trip.

Back in July of this year I took a trip out to Manassas Battlefield to photograph for my Civil War in Infrared project. I blogged about some of the photos from that trip previously. I entered several photos from that trip into the annual Civil War Preservation Trust photo contest. This is the second time I have entered.

About a month ago I was notified that I was a finalist in the Battlefield group and my photo of Henry House Hill was the background image on the home page.


I ended up coming in second in the Battlefield category and I'm very pleased. The infra red photo technique may not be as accessible to most viewers and I'm happy that the judges liked my photo.

Here is snippet of what they had to say about my photo on the website.

"This remarkable landscape photo of the Henry House at the Bull Run battlefield caught all of our judges attention."

I would like to congratulate all of the winners. You can view all of the winning photos at the following link. I plan on entering again next year and I hope I can place as well again.

Last weekend I made my first trip to Manassas Battlefield in Virginia. This is the site of the first major battle of the Civil War. The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas (the Confederate and Union forces had different names for each battle.) This first battle was fought on July 21, 1861. A second battle was also fought at this location a year later in August.

Just a few months after the start of the war at Fort Sumter the Union forces started their march toward the Confederate capital of Richmond Virginia. They believed that capturing the capital would put a quick end to the conflict. During the march to the capital the opposing sides had their first battle near a river called Bull Run (shown on right.)

During my planning for this trip I reviewed some of the photos taken by Matthew Brady from the National Archives on Flickr. I'm finding that viewing these photos gives me the opportunity to see what the battlefield looked like during this time period for scouting out important landmarks.

The Stone bridge was an important landmark it both of the battles that were fought at Bull Run. Stone Bridge crosses Bull Run to the North of the battlefield. After both battles the Union troops retreated across this bridge. It was destroyed during the Battle of First Manassas on July 21, 1861. A new bridge was built on the site of the old bridge in the same style as the first.

Here is a photo of the bridge from my recent visit.



The first battle of Bull Run started on Matthews Hill as 900 confederate troops attempted to delay over 10,000 Union troops. Shown below is a photo of Matthews Hill as seen from Henry House Hill. This delay gave the Confederates time to bring in support to block this advance.
 


At noon on the first day of fighting the Confederate troops were supported by Col. Thomas J. Jackson's Virginia brigade and his 13 cannons. During this battle Jackson earned his nickname Stonewall Jackson since he was able to stop the Union advance on the battlefield.
 


Overall I'm pleased with many of the images I was able to take at the battlefield and I'm looking forward to  photograph some areas I was not able to visit on this trip, including many of the sites from the second battle of Bull Run. You can view additional photos from this quick day trip on my Manassas Flickr set.

Earlier this month I drove up to Wilmington Delaware to attend a photowalk and Civil War reenactment train ride. For this trip I brought my Infrared converted camera and my Canon 5D which shoots standard color images. The photowalk and train ride started at the Wilmington & Western train station. At this location they run several historic diesel and steam locomotives. On this day we rode #98 which is a 1909 American Standard steam locomotive.



One of the reasons why I drove over 2 hours to Delaware was to photograph Civil War reenactors that were going to be riding the train for a skirmish between the Union and Confederate troops. The train arrived at the station and the Union troops disembarked and served as guards for the train and the station.

The reenactors never broke character during the entire train ride and there were several civilian reenactors at the train station as well.

Once everyone was boarded on the train it headed north up the Red Clay valley through some nice countryside and along the Red Clay Creek. The train ride was about 90 minutes and I recommend paying the extra dollar to sit in the open air car.

As we reached the end of the rail line the Confederate troops fired on the train from the cover of the trees and the Union troops left the train to engage in battle.



After the battle the Confederate troops were victorious and they boarded the train for the return trip back to the station.


It was an enjoyable day and I would like to visit the railroad again in the future. I have posted more photos from that day on Flickr in my Wilmington & Western set.

I meant to post this earlier when I saw it listed on the Flickr blog, but I was happy to see that the National Archives has started to post photos on Flickr using the creative commons license. One of the first collections they added were the scans from the Mathew Brady Civil War collection.

Mathew Brady (1823-1896) was one of the most prolific photographers of the nineteenth century, creating a visual documentation of the Civil War period (1860-1865).

The U.S. National Archives has digitized over 6,000 images from the series Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes (National Archive's Local Identifier 111-B) and included them in our online catalog. We plan to upload all of the ones available in the online catalog to Flickr gradually over a few months.

The sets for the Civil War photos can be viewed on Flickr under their new collection. One of the benefits for me is that I can now easily explore these photos for my own Civil War photographic project. I have already been inspired by many of the photos I have seen in this collection for my upcoming work. 

The Civil War was one of the first historic events that were able to be covered via photography and started the career of photojournalism. These photos are a great tour of the history of that time and I can spend hours looking through this collection.

General Ambrose B. Burnside and Staff of Twenty

Flickr link

The National Archives has also posted the full sized scanned images of these wet plate photographs. This gives you the ability to zoom in close to see the amazing details that were captured over 150 years ago. Here is the same photo zoomed in to 100%. Ambrose Burnside is shown on the right with his distinctive style of facial hair which is now known as sideburns, derived from his last name.

One of my major goals for this year is to finish planning and start my Civil War Infrared photography project in anticipation of the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the Civil War next year. In a nutshell my project is to photograph the Civil War battlefields using an Infrared converted digital camera. You can view some of the images in this Flickr set.

I have always found the study of the past and history an interesting subject. I continue to research and learn about the history of the world in my spare time and listen to several history based podcasts on my daily commute to work. I'm not sure if I'm just wired that way or maybe it was an influential history teacher in my past that generated my interest in History. You can't chalk it up to older age since I have always been interested in the subject (especially Military history.) 

Many people could care less about history and have no idea why I would want to waste my time on such a project. I recently saw the following article in my feed reader and it gave me a pause to think about how people think and view history.

Proof that History puts people to sleep
Gary Crabbe Enlightened Images

"However, with my current book project, the minute I tell people (or they sense) that it's a history book, they fall asleep. They turn off. They tune out. They switch off their radar. It's like you suddenly become a non-important entity. In all of my career, I've never experienced anything like this. But it's happened so often, among so many people at so many levels, that I'm now 1000% convinced that it's purely related to the history aspect." [ read more ]

So with this in mind I'm opening up the following questions to my readers.

Do you tune out history?

Do you have interest in history based photographic projects as an art viewer or maybe an art buyer?

Please leave a comment below.

I ask this question more out of curiosity rather than determining the future of this project. As a creative person and image maker I'm still going to proceed as planned no matter what the response. I'm just curious if history based projects are doomed to failure from the start.