Gettysburg, PA - 25 January 2011

Hi All,

I posted my photography assignment pics on Facebook, but will do the same here.

I went to Gettysburg, PA over the July 4th holiday last year and I took almost 300 pictures. I like to play around with my camera and sometimes I try to get a little serious with it too. As we were walking down main street, we came upon the train station. I ran across the street and quickly snapped a shot of my wife and daughters in front of the building. All I did for this was to center the building and zoom out just enough to catch one of my girls playing on the train tracks. I did not care about the background, or the composition, all I cared about was to capture the moment.

As I started to walk back across the street, I looked down the main drag and noticed how the depth of the town made for a nice composition. I quickly changed the settings on my camera to panoramic and took a series of three pictures. I panned from left to right, capturing the train station, main street and the restaurant. I used  the telephone pole and train crossing bars as a frame. It is not perfectly centered, but close enough to draw your eye in the direction of looking down the street. This way, you see what I saw on this day.

I posted both pictures in black/white and in color so you can see/compare for yourself how much the color adds to the scene. Gettysburg is a brightly painted city and I feel that the black/white pictures loses a lot of the feel for the town. The color photographs give you that, "I was there" feeling.