Another point of view



My favorite image on Little Round Top. The statue of General Warren is to the right,
 looking toward the Confederate position on July 2, 1863. For me, this image represents
 the turning point of the battle of Gettysburg.



Continuing on the same thoughts as the previous blog, here are some images of the statue of General Warren on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. During my three visits to Gettysburg, I have probably collected 300 images of the General.

          In all that time, he’s never moved.

          Since the subject doesn’t move, the photographer has to and I’ve tried to keep in mind the historical importance of Warren’s contribution to the Union cause on July 2, 1863. The historic reference directs my points of view.

          My favorite Warren image is the one above, a distant shot where he looks right to left and seems to be watching over a vast area. That shot was taken in 2010.



Almost the same image as the first, but about half the distance and I
stood slightly more to the right.



          There is another image from about the same angle but at about half the distance. This photograph is more about the surroundings than it is about Warren. Little Round Top is a rocky little hill.





Warren at sunset.

          One day in 2011, I had been around the area for about eight hours. It was a long way beyond dinner time when storm clouds drifted above the northern sky. The sun was setting as well and so, without moving an inch, I started recording images every half a minute or so and the shot kept changing. This is less an historic image than a pretty one, but I like it anyway. The reader is invited to decide: Did my point of view change or did my subject change?





Warren's front.

          There is the standard front view from below Warren’s rock, which shows details of the front of the statue. I had to jump on and off some rather large boulders to get this image and then go jumping around the other way to get back to level ground. All this while holding my Nikon. But the other shots show the history and the distant landscape without revealing details of the statue itself and I had to get this image. You can’t be an effective photographer if you allow yourself to be lazy.

          From his perch on Little Round Top, Warren could see locations which have become iconic to history students: Seminary Ridge, the Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield and Cemetery Ridge. The modern visitor can see the Pennsylvania Memorial.

I have images of all those areas from the approximate spot where Warren stood all those years ago. But the images of the Warren statue make a bigger impact on me. I hope you enjoy them and I hope evolving photographers understand the importance of multiple points of view of a subject.

Thanks for looking and reading.

Point of View



This is the Tennessee Infantry memorial along Horseshoe Ridge at
Chickamauga. The memorial stands amid several position markers
for Tennessee regiments that were active on this ground during
the battle.



One of the first assignments a photography student must fulfill is the point of view assignment wherein the aspiring photographer must capture images of the same subject from a number of differing views. When I was a photo student, and as long as I have been an instructor’s assistant, the assignment was to shoot from five different views.

          Like every important lesson in life, there is a reason for the assignment. A photographer must learn to look at a subject from every possible viewpoint before determining which angle makes the best photograph. This is the first lesson on the path to becoming a successful photographer.

          For me it means more than just looking from different viewpoints. I shoot from every viewpoint I explore. When I’m using film, the process becomes expensive because I typically shoot several frames from each viewpoint. The solution to the problem of expense is, of course, to get over it.

          Properly composed images are the best solution to the issue of cost containment, but that does not change that fact that you need to try varying camera settings, make minor adjustments to your stance and make other similar modifications for each frame. A seemingly inconsequential alteration to any of the variables that go into a photograph can be the difference between ho-hum and holy cow!



The soldier atop the monument has
aged some, but he captures your
attention. This is one of my favorite
pieces of stonework in all of the
Civil War battlefield parks.



          The images here were taken at the Chickamauga National Military Park in Tennessee in 2011. They serve the point about the point of view assignment. I have made small notes in the captions in order to supply information for the history fans out there.

          Point of view includes time of day. I can assure you that I have not even considered photographing Chickamauga after dark, near dark or even in the hours approaching dark. But I’ve been there in the early morning (in good daylight) and nabbed some nice images.

          Point of view can include the time of year the photographer approaches a subject. I have walked the grounds at Chickamauga in the very early spring, before nature started turning things green again, and I have walked the same area in the early summer. The battle occurred September 18-20, 1863 and the colors on the battlefield are luscious that time of year.

          But there is a starkness in the early spring that makes a point about the battlefield. The tree branches are naked and the grass is thin and light. Everything seems to be a variation of brown and gray. There is a mood available for a photographer with a plan and the eye to see what is available.

The marker for the 118th Ohio Infantry Regiment is in the foreground. I
like this point of view because it illustrates how close the fighting was
on Horseshoe Ridge on September 20, 1863.

          When I walk the grounds of any battlefield, I have great enthusiasm for the task at hand. I am very interested in history. But I also walk with great respect for what happened on the ground beneath my feet. That is another important point of view.         

           For that reason, I study before I go to Chickamauga or Gettysburg. I typically go with a plan, expecting to photograph an area new for me. I need to know the history well enough to understand what each differing view represents, historically. Sometimes it works the other way; I’ll find something I don’t know about and I’ll photograph the heck out of a new discovery (new for me) so that when I research the history later, I can go back to my images and know what I am looking at.



The smaller stones are not grave markers. They are position
 markers for some of the Tennessee regiments that fought on
 the Ridge that day.



          That happened on Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg last summer. I found something I knew nothing about. Let me tell you, I covered the living daylights out of that small area with my Nikon. You want point of view? How about 150 images. I even got images of adjacent areas in order to make it easy to find the place again.

Guess what? The best shot of the bunch came from an adjacent area.

I should hasten to add that I shot those 150 images with a digital camera. My suggestion to get over the price of film only goes so far.

This view helps show the height of the statue and it illustrates
that the Confederates, in this case the men from Tennessee,
 came up a hill and out of the trees.

Having said all of the above, beginning photographers need to understand the importance of using different points of view, different camera settings and even different cameras (film, digital) as tools. Each tool has a purpose.

Look at the images here. Some are better than others. Some viewpoints work well, some do not. You have to explore each subject with a willingness to go beyond the obvious.

If you are willing to put in the time to learning this lesson, you’ll begin producing better images.

Thanks for reading.

Go ahead, argue with the Fonz

Updated with proper spellings! Dates are correct!

This weekend we honored two of America’s iconic figures, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Great men, both. No argument here, both deserve our nation’s enduring gratitude for their service.

            But you have to wonder what it takes to get your birthdate on a calendar. I buy a calendar every year and still haven’t found one with a rememberance of my birthdate.

            Washington, Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and that’s all. No more birthdays on most calendars you can buy.

            Washington served in the army in the French and Indian War before rejoining the colonials as a General to fight in the Revolutionary War. Then he gave us eight years of steady leadership as president and retired.

Isn’t that what Dwight David Eisenhower did? He served in the U.S. Army during the First World War, and then was a key figure as a General during the Second World War. He was elected president and gave us eight years of steady leadership before he retired. He even helped golf gain popularity.

And Eisenhower gained the backing of a popular cult figure (albeit a fictional one) named Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, who once said, “I like Ike. My bike likes Ike.”

Eisenhower was born October 14, 1890 but you’d never know it by looking at a calendar.

And what about Franklin D. Roosevelt? The only president to be elected four times, the longest-serving president. He steadied a panicking nation during the Great Depression and lived long enough to see us through the worst days of the Second World War. He died knowing we’d win.

Compare FDR to Honest Abe. Lincoln’s first election brought about the start of the Civil War, which is what you’d call your basic indelible mark on American history. He was elected twice, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and lived long enough to know that the Union had won the war and that the nation would be reunited. Had Lincoln lived through his second term, there is no doubt the nation would have been better served during what was a very difficult time for the country as a whole.

But why isn’t Roosevelt’s name on my calendar? I mean, geez, he was elected four times.

We’ve had many Americans that made their mark on our history without serving in the political arena, like Dr. King and Chavez did. Not all of them should be honored with calendar space. Al Capone, for example, would be a bad choice. Having Capone’s birthday on a calendar would be sort of like having Amelia Earhart’s name on a line of luggage.

Wait a minute. There is a line of Amelia Earhart luggage.

Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson are memorialized on the side of a mountain in the fabulous Mount Rushmore monument, alongside Washington and Lincoln, but you don’t see Teddy or Tommy on calendars. Mountains are one thing, I guess, but calendars are different.

We have something proclaimed as President’s Day, which is supposed to honor all of our chief executives. Including, I suppose, Richard Nixon and Ulysses Grant.

Now, you can argue that Washington and Lincoln have their birthdates on calendars because their birthdays are observed as holidays. You’d be wrong. Washington’s birthday is February 22, which none of us will have off, and Lincoln’s birthday, which everyone ignored, is February 12. The holidays are observed, you know, at some convenient time.

Personally, I think John Wayne’s birthdate ought to be on calendars every year, along with newsman Walter Cronkite’s. One other guy, too, William M. Robison. Robison worked for Wells Fargo for 40 years, transporting millions of dollars in gold safely for the company and its customers. He was also a leader of the African American community in Stockton, California. I have a free calendar from Wells Fargo next to my desk. Robison’s picture and a brief bio appear on the side of the February page.

But Robison’s birthdate is nowhere to be seen.

           Thanks for reading.

Never saw anything like it

            It was, without question, the finest example of mental toughness you’ve ever heard of in motorsports history. Maybe in any sport’s history. For sheer gutty emotional discipline or cerebral strength, you might never see it’s equal.

            In any walk of life.

            The place was Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway, the beautiful drag strip known as Thunder Valley, and the year was 2008.

            It was Sunday, eliminations day for the event, and we were struggling with rain. Not the hammering heavy kind that threatens to send you home in a canoe, but the hit-and-miss stuff that can dampen the track just enough to stop racing for an hour or so. We’d get hit for a time, then need to re-dry the track.

            Funny Car driver Melanie Troxel, like many other drivers that day, was starting to feel like the clown in a Jack-In-The-Box kid’s toy. She’d get seated in her car, then have to pop out so the crew could cover her machine to protect it from rain. That happened five times before her first round race. Two other times, Troxel had her engine started and was going though her pre-race procedure, only to have to shut the engine off due to the reappearance of liquid sunshine. Troxel actually did a burnout and was staging the car for her race when rain came back on one occasion.

            That is a significant moment in nitro class drag racing. The starting line stoppage forced the crew to take Troxel’s car back to the pits to service the engine and other systems on the car. You can’t just start one of those things and then turn it off.

            Melanie Troxel climbed in and out of her race car eight times during the first round that day. The eighth time was a charm, obviously, because she won the race.

            Then she went on to win the event.

            If you don’t understand drag racing, you’ll never understand how hard it was to do what Troxel did that day. Drag racing is about building up to a specific instant, the single slice of time when the green light begins to glow. A driver must be perfectly ready to trigger the 9,000 horsepower monster that powers the car.

            Once a drag racer puts that driver’s helmet on, she enters a little world where the smallest distraction means losing. You’re either perfectly ready or the other car beats you. The other car might beat you anyway, but that’s a different story.

            Melanie Troxel put her helmet on and then took it off without racing seven times during that first round at Bristol. Read it again: Seven times. Then she went out and beat everyone.

            Nowadays, if she sees rain in the forecast on race day, Troxel shrugs. She figures she has an advantage. She’s the toughest drag racer on the planet, mentally, and she knows it.

            Thanks for reading.

Giant correction

Wrong again.

Congratulations to the New York Giants and all their fans!

And thanks for reading.

If I must pick a winner, I pick...

This year’s Super Bowl is a tough one to pick. Typically, defense wins in big games and the New York Giants are better, defensively, that the New England Patriots.

But the Patriots have beaten some very good defensive teams this season and it seems to me that the New England defense has played better in the post-season than it did during the regular season.

The first time these franchises met in the title game, I expected the Patriots to win. They were undefeated, remember? I remember saying that the Giants could win if they could put consistent pressure on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, but I did not expect the Giants to get pressure on Brady. I was dead wrong and the Giants won.

This year, I think that for New York to win, the Giants’ four down linemen will have to be able to pressure Brady without help from blitzing linebackers or defensive backs. I don’t see how the Giants will be able to do that.

On the flip side, the Giants have an effective offense but the Patriots have enough defense to slow New York down.

If I had to bet money, I’d take the Patriots to win. I’m glad that I don’t have to bet because I expect this to be a good, close game.

I hope you enjoy the game. Thanks for reading.