This was a fun shoot for Preservation magazine. Jessie Despard the Art Director for Preservation asked me to shoot a story on The Wilderness Battlefield in Central Virginia and how it may be impacted by the construction of a new Wal-Mart less than a mile from the battlefield. Jessie came up with the idea of shooting the field with an SX-70 polaroid of a Wal-Mart in the frame.
The rainy day image of the Wal-Mart was shot by a Preservation staffer Beth Caudell Siegel and I created a Polaroid SX-70 frame for the image with a PhotoShop action. I defocused the image a bit and printed it on several paper stocks in order to find one that most closely resembled a real SX-70 polaroid. The goal was to find the perfect spot on the proposed building site that would look perfect as an out of focus background for a hand holding the polaroid. Art Director Jessie became the hand model for this late winter image. (There are quite a few PS actions for creating SX-70 frames – try this link to download a few of them)
The majority of the story were portraits of the folks interested in moving the Wal-Mart up Route 20 a mile or so, several stitched panoramic photographs of the battlefield and a the gravesite for Stonewall Jackson’s arm.
This one was kind of strange. Here it was, late February, just weeks after our double-blast of back-to-back twenty-plus inch blizzards and I am laying on the ground in the snow, my face buried into the mud, getting my Nikon as low and possible to the ground to look up at the headstone and to make sure no snow was showing in the background, plus an assistant was holding a Nikon SB to light the headstone so we could bring out the detail in the relief. It felt pretty absurd and was funny at the same time.
I shot all of the portraits with two new Nikon lenses I recently purchased. The wonderful and shockingly sharp 100mm f/2.8 VR and equally scary 45mm for tilt/shift work.
I rarely use the tilt function for these lenses but sure love being able to shift for stitches and for the occasional architectural shoot.