Gettysburg Mood Generator

Fog is a fantastic mood generator. At least that is what I think after spending a couple of days exploring Gettysburg National Military Park and looking at the early morning and evening photos I took. It was also the resounding advice, piped one of my mentors, A.D. Wheeler, after I exclaimed I would be staying there. You can see AD’s fantastic gallery of Gettysburg here.

It rained the day we arrived, making it a muddy disaster, but luckily that cleared up soon after so I could do some exploring. You could almost say I was cheating by staying at the RV park 5 minutes away with family. This made 6am photos possible, with a 5am jolt from my silent, vibrating, alarm from my smart watch. This was handy as it didn’t disturb the rest of the campers. After coffee, needless to say, I was giddy to get out and explore ! One hot tip is to spend a day scouting out where the fog is and get a feel for the area. I think this holds true for any photography adventure, if your schedule permits. Although all cameras are fantastic, I thought I would mention these were all taken with my Sony A5000 ASP-C “lightcatcher” (this is an imaginary word I picked up from other photogs and use at times for “camera”) with 16-55mm kit lens. If you are curious about the gear used.

So enough about base camp and gear right ! ? Here are a couple of different moods, using fog as the hero of the story or a supporting character I think, created from the park.

This one is called hardcore mode. It’s a 3 shot HDR from about 10am and going for the surreal.

Up next is something that has a soft feel to it, but I decided to make life interesting and rotate the image to add tension. This one is called the quickening, as in The Highlander movie series. This was from around 6:40am.

This was taken right around 6am and the fog is very subtle off in the distance, in front of the Pennsylvania Monument and sunrise. Good morning ? 🙂

This one has a darker, sinister feel with a back and forth struggle between the two trees. Taken early evening around 8:30pm

I get a sense of hope here with the light leak from the sun shinning on the flower just off center to the right. Taken just before 6am. What do you think ?

Cheers,

Jamie