Recently in History Category

Harper's Ferry Cemetery

By Mark on April 8, 2010 8:09 AM
Harpers Ferry CemeteryI have been making plans for my Civil War photo project and mapping out the locations I want to visit over the coming months. In preparation for my upcoming photo shoots I took the opportunity this past weekend to bring my Infrared converted camera to Harper's Ferry. My goal was to get my eye trained to start thinking in infrared.

Shooting in IR is a similar process to shooting in black and white. You need to see the world differently. You are looking for contrast and form rather than color. With infrared you have the same challenge of black and white but the added challenge of how the contrast and coloring of the scene is affected by the infrared process. Clouds in the sky become more intense and any green foliage will be shown as white. One of the advantages of shooting in infrared is you can shoot in the middle of the day in full sun rather than during the golden hours of the day.

The top of the hill at Harper's Ferry is a great cemetery that contains grave markers going back hundreds of years. When we reached this area I took out my camera to create a series of images from the cemetery.

The IR process gives the images a moody and surreal look that I'm trying to achieve for my project.

Harpers Ferry Cemetery

Many of the graver markers are from the Civil War era and this land was held by both the Union and Confederate troops several times during the Civil War.

Harpers Ferry Cemetery


I don't expect any of these images to show up in my project, but I like how they came out and I'm becoming more motivated to get working on my project again.

Harpers Ferry Cemetery

Fu-Go Fire Balloons

By Mark on March 31, 2010 4:05 PM
This past weekend I was listening to the Military History podcast about the history of unmanned drones and  was surprised to learn that during World War II the Japanese used unmanned balloons to try and fire bomb the United States and Canada. 

After hearing about these balloons I then spent an evening doing some additional research and learned that 6 people died in Oregon after finding one of these balloons stuck in a tree. These six people were the only known casualties caused by the Japanese fire balloon attacks. One reason why many people never learned about this attack on the US mainland was that the US Office of Censorship actively suppressed any news about these firebombs. The U.S. strategy was to keep the Japanese from knowing of the balloon bombs' effectiveness. Apparently this strategy paid off since the Japanese abandoned the project since there was no evidence of the effectiveness of the attack.

Embedded below is a video I found during my research about these balloon attacks.



Here are some additional links if you want to learn more about these fire balloons:

This is one aspect of history from World War II that I have never heard about before and I found it interesting. These little tidbits of new found knowledge are what keep me interested in the study of historical subjects.
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