Each spring, the town of East Bridgewater, MA holds “Calvin Harlow Day” in honor of Sgt. Calvin Francis Harlow, 29th Mass Volunteers, Infantry Co. C, a local Civil War hero. As part of the festivities, the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a group of Civil War reenactors holds an encampment and skirmishes with a rebel unit at the Sachem Rock Farm.
I have attended this event for the past three or four years and made photos of the action without much forethought. This past May, I went again with a specific goal in mind. I wanted to take candid black and white portraits of the reenactors. I approached the task as a wildlife photographer would… big surprise! I mounted my 70-300 mm lens on the camera and stalked the soldiers!
In making these images I paid careful attention to the light and to the backgrounds. It was a bright sunny day with way too much contrast for good photography. Fortunately, there are a number of trees around and waiting for folks to move into open shade was not too hard.
As you might expect there are plenty of people, both spectators and participants, milling around at an event like this. Thus the hard part was getting “clean” backgrounds. The key was finding angles that would eliminate distractions in the background. Getting soft, out of focus, backgrounds is relatively easy… the long lens pretty much takes care of that.
All but one of these photographs, were “candid”, I did not ask the subject to pose and in most cases, I doubt that the subject even knew I snapped the shutter. (I am not going to say which portrait was posed!)
Here are the photos; comments appreciated as always:
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