Robert Gould: Now and Then Trostle Barn Gettysburg

I put together a "Now and Then" photomontage of the Trostle Barn. It's kind of fun to walk the battlefields with a William Frassanito's book in your hand.

I am thinking that I should expand this blog entry because it is the subject of numerous “internet” searches. The photo above was part of a Gettysburg trip I took with my family in March 2009. It was the first time that I photographed battlefields using Holga 120 film cameras. I have never really used this type of camera before. It was on loan to me from Valerie my wife. She is a professional photographer and had used this camera for creating photomontages. Her web page is here-

One problem with this camera is that sometimes the film does not get wound tightly onto the film spool. When this happens light can get around the paper film backing and fog the film. That is what happened to some of these rolls. Now often I use a film changing bag when I change rolls of film. After shooting I had the film developed in a film lab. I was skeptical as to what my results would be. However after seeing the negatives, I was sold on the Holga format. In fact I bought some antique cameras hopping to get the same kind of unpredictable results, but so far the Holga remains my camera of choice.

Worm Fence above the Trostle Farm near the Peach Orchard.

My photo session started with no particular shots in mind. I remember just driving around thinking that would make a good shot. I soon found myself at the Trostle Farm. I also happened to have brought along William Frassanito’s book “Gettysburg A journey in Time”. And at this point I fished through the book and found the iconic O’Sullivan shot. The one showing Bigelow’s artillery horses lying in a pile. Walking out in to the field with book in hand I lined up the camera angle.

Only later playing around with Photoshop I was able to incorporate the two images together. Below are more images from this trip.