We had a modest (15 people) turnout for our tour on June 9, but the small crowd allowed for a lot of back and forth with our guide John Cummings. John managed to convincingly upset a few apple carts full of interpretations of the locations of period photos on the battlefield. All in all, it was a good day.
One of the highlights of the day was a demonstration of the wet plate photography process by Robert Szabo, at the Stuart-Mosby Historical Society in Centreville. First he painstakingly demonstrated the whole process, out of his mobile darkroom right there in the parking lot:
Robert Szabo and his mobile darkroom
Then he set up the camera for a shot of the group:
Next, he posed the group near this reproduction winter quarters hut:
After the exposure (one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand), the magic happened:
The final product – click on the image twice and you get a super huge version:
Harry Smeltzer
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