Sunday, May 2, 2010

Blue and Gray

Shooting a fairly unrehearsed, and uncommunicated battle field reinactment poses many challeges including shutter speed, blown out skies and poor autofocus.

The first three images from the very photogenic Civil War reinactment. These were all shot using a Cokin graduated ND filter, which is why the sky looks so good.

I bumped my ISO to 200 and shot, for the most part under F/6 to gain back the stop of light lost from the ND filter. This allowed me to nearly freeze the action on the field.

Auto-Focus proved very challenging and many soft images were the result. But in mastering the auto/manual focus, much success can be achieved.
The Muzzel flash's ooh value is only surpassed by the volume of the sound these firearms produce.

The pistols, although quieter than the rifles and canons, are surprisingly loud.

Safety is the NWCWC's primary concern and although it looks dangerous, and it is, these men and women train constantly and the results of this training show in the fact that the NWCWC's safety record is flawless.



The canon's used in the battle reinactments are well crafts incredibly detailed pieces of art.

Many of the canons are built by the teams that run them.

The craftmenship on them is astonishing. If you haven't seen on of these reinactments, you should do yourself a favor.