I always absolutely love exploring a new city with my camera. We went to Birmingham, Alabama for a business trip and the days were beautiful and Birmingham proved to be a clean, friendly, and walkable city. We stayed mostly in Downtown Birmingham. We didn’t make it to Five Points South unfortunately. We also explored Uptown a little bit – although that is a brand new area of town, apparently. 

The architecture was inspiring! It was a very interesting mix of old and new buildings. New cities always provide me with new perspectives, new angles, new light, and new lines. All in all, it was a great trip for taking photographs. Here is a smattering.

Probably one year ago Steve started working with a tour company to provide a Civil War Battlefield tour called: In the Footsteps of the Civil War Soldier. That work came to fruition last week when 22 Civil War buffs –including myself – embarked on a five-day tour with Steve as their peerless leader. I actually didn’t get very many photographs. As you can tell from my website, nature shots aren’t really my thing. But Antietam and Gettysburg Battlefields are incredibly beautiful – and I’m sure my photos don’t do them justice anyway. First I’ll share some pictures of Antietam.

The third morning of the tour I got some time in downtown Gettysburg to do some of my more typical photographs of the urban environment. I was so lucky that the light was absolutely amazing and the town was full of interesting textures and angles. I really could have spent hours there but only had around 50 minutes.

My last day on the tour (I only got to tag along for 3 days) included a morning at Gettysburg battlefield and the stories we heard were absolutely amazing: both shocking and heartbreaking. If you’ve never been then you need to go to Gettysburg and talk with experts about the battlefield and the battle that changed the course of the Civil War. (At least I think that’s what they said.)

My photos are only meant to give you the briefest taste of the beauty of these National Parks. Both of these battlefields are maintained by the National Park Service. Thank you to the NPS for doing such a spectacular job!

I traveled to Idaho for the 2017 Great American Eclipse and I brought my camera – though I had no intention of trying to take eclipse photos. I decided to enjoy the experience and leave the photos to the experts. 

But I did decide that I had to spend one good, long morning in downtown Idaho Falls, Idaho and take some photosbyfrances of my birthplace and old home town. The sun was behind the clouds most of the morning so I switched into black and white. But when the sun re-appeared I snapped a few color photos. Here they are! Take a look. Thanks!