Veterans Day

In July I was working on a photography project at Cambridge American Cemetery. My shooting week was documented in this post. I was photographing the grave marker of Finis E. Harris Jr. His family lives in the United States, but right now I am living not far from the cemetery, so I made these images for them:

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 55mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 30mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 20mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 18mm

ISO 25 f/2.4 1/590sec 3.3mm

When it came to editing, these photos have had very minimal edits applied. The idea was to show the marker as it is. The cemetery here is a really nice one, beautiful and peaceful. The American Battle Monuments Commission manages this and several other overseas military burial sites. I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few of them. They are all really well run. If you happen to have a family member buried or memorialized at one of these sites, know that they do have a lovely final resting spot.

I was back at the Cambridge site this morning for a Veterans Day service:

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Thanks to all veterans, past and present. #veteransday #armisticeday

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Nov 11, 2019 at 4:54am PST

Added to A Photo a Week Photo Challenge, In the Neighborhood.

Cheers!

When It All Adds Up

A while back I blogged about this photo:

ISO 800 50mm f/13 1/160

Based on what I could find online, a few things like his name and date of birth didn’t seem to add up when you looked at this grave marker.  So I went back to the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. The staff member who helped me was a bit surprised that I wasn’t researching a relative,but was more than happy to give me a hand in my research.  It ended up being pretty simple.  The Carlisle H. Reville whose grave I photographed, was Carlisle H. Reville Jr.  My search had been further complicated by the fact that the 1930 Census record was handwritten, and the later data entry spelled his first name wrong.

It’s easy to see why a mistake was made.

So, on the data entry portion of this page, he is listed as “Caulislo”, easy to see why.

In the course of my research I found out that Reville Sr. had served in WWI.  I also found out that Reville Jr. had first been buried at another cemetery but was moved here when this cemetery was established.  What I can’t find is a decent lead on the family, other than they were living in Pennsylvania in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  If you happen to know this family, I am more than happy to have them contact me if they would like a digital copy of the photo I have taken of their relative’s grave.

Since I was back at the cemetery, you know that I took some more pictures.  Here is one from that day:

The edited black and white version

I’ve edited this in Lightroom and using a black and white plug-in.  I’ll post the original below, but one of the first things I did while it was still a color version was to bring out detail in the shadows and increase the saturation in the blues and the greens.  It looks horrible in that state, but once it is converted to black and white it looks good again. Here is the original file:

The original

The subject is well suited to black and white I think.  I’ve included it in my portfolio at Picfair. Somehow the color version just seems to vivid for the subject matter.  What do you think?  Feel free to comment on my new photo or on the follow up from my older post.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Connections

Today is Remembrance Day or Veterans Day and the poppy is a symbol for both.  I took a photo of some poppies growing in a field in Fundy National Park a few years ago and I decided to re-edit one of them for today.

ISO 200 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/400

In order to get the original shot, which I will put at the bottom of this post, I did have to set the shutter speed fairly high because it was windy that day and I did not have a tripod with me.  It still turned out to be a pretty bright image.  In the version that you see above I have combined a few filters in Photoshop and I ended up liking this particular combination.

First under Filter I chose -Filter Gallery and then -Colored Pencil.  I chose a fairly thick stroke and a medium-light canvas.  From there I chose Filter again and then -Other  -High Pass then I changed my blending mode to saturation.  It was the last step that dropped almost all of the color out of the image in a way that I liked.

Here is the original image:

ISO 200 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/400

Quite different isn’t it? Do you have a preference?

Sad that this poppy is connected with thoughts of so many who have died.  It is a beautiful flower.  This post was written in part in response to this week’s travel theme, connections.

Peace to all of you.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Soft

I didn’t have to travel any further than my backyard for this week’s theme from Where’s my backpack?

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/18 60s

This is a long exposure of the soft morning light.

Also, I just wanted to say thanks to all Veterans.  I remember.

Cheers!