Finding Photos on Flickr

For those who are not familiar with it, Flickr is a way for users to share their photos online. Users can make them public or private depending on how they want to share them. The great part about Flickr is that users can tag their photos so they are searchable similar to bookmarks with del.icio.us.

One additional thing is that Flickr supports RSS feeds for these tags. This means that you can do search for a particular tag, then subscribe to the RSS feed for that tag and everytime someone uploads a photo and tags it with your search, it will come right to your RSS aggregator.

Here is an example:

Say you want to setup an RSS feed for photos with the tag "Gettysburg" in them

• Got to this url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/gettysburg/
• Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you will see a link that says "Subscribe to stuff tagged with gettysburg" -- Add this link to your RSS Aggregator and that's it!
• If you want to change the tag, simply replace the word Gettysburg in the above URL with any tag such as Antietam, CivilWar, battlefield, etc.

A few comments on this feature:

• You can get some great photos to show in your classroom.
  
• There are some incredible shots done by professional photographers
• You can locate some original photos by Civil War era photographers such as O'Sullivan and Brady.
• Some of the photos may even be in the Creative Commons
• Beware! You may also get photos of people vacationing in Gettysburg.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Until next time...

Gettysburg Photographs

As you know, I love looking at Civil War era photographs and I have discussed the site Virtual Civil War before. Well, Mike Lynaugh has put together a collection of original Civil War photographs on his website Virtual Civil War.

This collection of Civil War photographs will allow your students to view some excellent photos or provide you with some primary sources to display for conversation starters within the classroom. The collection contains a good variety of photos from pictures of dead soldiers, to the White House and even ones of famous leaders of the Civil War.

Classroom ideas:

• Have your students look at a photo and then reflect on what they are seeing or have them describe the situation. This goes back to having them think like historians.
  
• Have them create a slideshow of related photos and use Voicethread to share the presentation
  
• Have them pick a particular image and then research more about the clothing, the battle, or location.
• Play detective (CSI) and see what clues they can find by looking with their magnifying glasses (aka, using the Zoom In feature of your photo editor).
  

While you are on the Virtual Civil War site, check out Mike's section on Battlefields Today that contains pictures from battlefields across the US including Gettysburg.

So many photos, so little time. :)

Making New Photos Look Old

Here is something cool you can do with your students. Have them take modern photos and make them look old. For example, here is a photo that I took of some friends of mine from Sykes Regulars.


You can then take the photograph and put it into your favorite photo editor such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or GiMP.

Once you have it in your editor, start playing with the tone to make it look black & white using a sepia tone filter and then next you will want to blur the edges to give it that slightly unfocused look. Play with different filters to see the different effects they have on the image.

Now for some more advanced edits. If you know how to create layers in your editor, you could take the background from an old photograph and place the modern photo (that you have just revised) on top to give you the rough edges of the photo. This would require you to select a portion of the modern photo and then paste it on top of the new layer.

Here is what the revised image might look like:


Let me know what you come up with. This also leads me to consider creating a few short "how-to" videos to put up on TeacherTube on how to do some of these things.

New Image of Lincoln at Gettysburg Found

While in Boston this morning I opened my complimentary copy of USA Today to find a headline article about a new image of Abe Lincoln at Gettysburg being found at the Library of Congress.

The story discusses how an amateur historian was looking at photographs of the famous Gettysburg Address and found Lincoln in his famous top hat riding a horse to the speaker's stand.

You can read the entire article HERE.

Here is a close up of the photo from the article showing what appears to be Lincoln

Photo from USA Today.

I have posted before about using photographs in your classroom. The historian in the article had researched the events around the Gettysburg Address and was simply looking at photographs and made a terrific discovery. You and your students can do the same thing in your classroom. Who knows, you may be the one to find the next photo of Lincoln or other famous Civil War figure.

Researchers advocate instructional approaches that engage students in the processes of doing history (Friedman, 2005). This process includes building historical knowledge through the use of primary sources, conducting historical inquiry, and encouraging students to think historically. As part of this process, students must be active learners, by seeking answers rather than waiting for them when engaging in the analysis of primary sources. The reason for this is that the process of engaging in historical thinking is more than simply absorbing information; instead it requires seeking out answers to questions (Friedman, 2005). While viewing a primary source, students will examine the historical document and then construct a narrative based on that document. Through the process of constructing this narrative, students have begun to develop inquiry skills that they will be able to use throughout their life (Wineburg, 2001). According to VanSledright (2002), children as young as seven and eight years old are capable of thinking historically.

Good luck and have fun exploring those photos.

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References:

Friedman, A. (2005, May). Using digital primary sources to teach world history and
world geography: Practices, promises, and provisions. Journal for the Association of History and Computing, 8, Retrieved October 2005, from http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/JAHCVIII1/articles/friedman.htm#037

VanSledright, B. (2002). In search of America's past. New York, NY: Teacher's College
Press

Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.

A soldier from Wildcat Regiment

An interesting way for students to experience the Civil War is to personalize it for them. One way to personalize the Civil War is to allow students to experience the war through the eyes (or in this case letters and documents) of a solider. The Library of Congress has created A Solider from the Wildcat Regiment that details the life of a Union solider in the 105th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. This digital resource center contains documents, photographs and letters related to Capt. Tilton Reynolds combined with ideas and suggestions on how you can incorporate the information into your classroom.

The following is from the Library of Congress Website:

A Civil War Soldier in the Wild Cat Regiment … a Collection Connection from the Learning Page

Help your students make personal connections with history by considering the lives of a young Union soldier and his family during the Civil War. Through letters and other documents, the collection describes the drudgery of life in military camps, details of troop movements, experiences of a prisoner of war, a soldier's view of politics, and feelings of homesickness and familial love.


Until next time...

Great Source for modern Gettysburg Photographs

Mike Lynaugh is a professional photographer who has created a collection of photographs of Civil War battlefields and reenactments know as Virtual Civil War.

One of my favorite collections is his Gettysburg Gallery that contains some incredible photographs of the battlefield as it looks today. What a great way for you to tour the battlefield with your students. Or art teachers can use the photographs to discuss some of the techniques the Mike uses to create these terrific photographs.

Here are two of my favorites:

This is a close up of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (PVI) monument on Oak Ridge. This is Sallie Ann Jarrett, the mascot of the the 11th PVI who was present at Gettysburg and got left behind when the 11th fell back through the town. Sallie stayed on the field, behind enemy lives with the dead and wounded of the 11th. More on her for another post.

My other favorite is this one of an extreme close up of the Virginia Monument showing the details that go into creating such a magnificient monument.
Be sure to check out Mike's other galleries such as Antietam, Harper's Ferry and Manassas.


PS: I also have a special photo of the 11th PVI monument as my desktop wallpaper. ;)

Using Photos Part 2

Okay, so back in December I asked you to take a look at the following photograph so we could explore all of its hidden treasures. This photograph shows the same building from my December 8th post that showed wounded soldiers from the battles in the "Wilderness" at Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 1864. This Gardner photograph of the US Sanitary Commission cooking tent is taken from a slightly different angle and a bit further away from the building. You can obtain a copy of the high resolution TIFF version of the image from the Library of Congress website.


So, let’s open up the photo in your favorite program (I use GIMP) and start taking a look around. On the surface we can several people standing and sitting around the yard. There appear to be a few wounded soldiers near the building, some gentlemen in front of the tent and some ladies sitting under the tree to the left of the barrels. There also appears to be a bed or cot in the middle of the yard.

Now, let’s grab our magnifying glass and see what else we can find. By increasing the magnification you can see at least people within this scene. Can you find them? There are two wounded soldiers (both with left arm wounds) on the left side of the image. There are 14 people situated near the center of the image. But where are the others? Zoom in on the area between the building and the back of the tent. You can see two and possibly three (there may be two in the carriage) people here. Finally, on the far right of the image, you can see the shadowy image of someone standing behind the barrels. Continue to zoom in on the individuals and look at their expressions and clothing.

What else can you find? See if you can locate some of the following items: the coffee pot, an umbrella, the US Sanitary Commission sign on the tent, a wash basin (look on the left side of the image), the stretcher that was leaning against the building in the previous image and the gentlemen drinking coffee.

Until next time, happy hunting.

Using Photos Part 1

So I thought that I would start a series on how to use photographs from the Civil War era in order to increase understanding. Looking at photographs can tell us a great deal about many different aspects of the war.

Today we will discuss the following photograph from the Library of Congress website:

This photo shows wounded soldiers from the battles in the "Wilderness" at Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 1864.

There are seven soldiers and one nurse pictured outside this makeshift hospital. For simplicity sake, let's number them one to seven from left to right. So, number three is standing in the doorway.

What else can we notice? It looks like five out of the seven soldiers have some type of leg or foot wound that requires the use of crutches. Speaking of crutches...these ones look like one size fits all. Straight wooden poles with wooden parts for under the arms. The soldier six has his right arm in a heavy bandage.

What else can we notice? Hmm.... Well, soldiers one, two and three are all first sergeants based on the strips on their sack coats. Something that appears to be a stretcher is leaning up against the building on the right hand side. The solider one has a very interesting looking blanket under his wounded leg. The soldiers two and five both appear to be smoking a pipe and you can clearly see a chain across the front of soldier two's vest. This was probably connected to his pocket watch. Look very close and can see soldier two's hat on the ground in front of him.

As for the nurse, she is sitting watch over the wounded in her nice gown and matching bonnet. You can also see that she is holding a canteen in her lap.

Here is another picture taken from a slightly different angle looking at the back of the building.

The caption indicates that this is the cook house for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. What can you see in this photograph? Let me know what you find and we will discuss it in Part 2.

Using Photographs from the LOC

As many of you know, the Library of Congress has a website called Selected Civil War Photographs. This page makes browsing the photographs easy because they have a Search feature, a Subject browse, or you can look at photos from each year of the War. There is also information about Understand and Working with the Collection.

One of my favorites is the "Does The Camera Ever Lie" link. On this page it begins to talk about how photographers of the Civil War era changed or manipulated captions in photographs in order to achieve a more dramatic effect. This page provides two links: The Case of the Confused Identy and The Case of the Moved Body Let's look at the one about The Case of the Moved Body.

The photograph (Figure 1) shows a very famous picture by Alexander Gardner of a dead Confederate solider in Devil's Den shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg. According to research by William Frassanito (1975), Gardner actually moved this dead soldier some 50 yards up a hill in order to capture the now famous image (p. 191) . The LOC pages describe the two images and provide an analysis of how they are similar. But how can we let our students to some analysis of these photos?

Figure 1:

Here's how: On this same website download the same two images from The Case of the Moved Body in the large RAW TIFF format. If you have access to a projector, show the images on the screen. Then using a paint program such as GIMP or Paint Shop Pro, open the images and begin to look at them in more detail. Now, use the magnifying glass of your paint program to zoom in on the images. The TIFF format of the photo allows you to zoom in to the photo with higher maginifications without distorting the image. So, at these higher resolutions, you can look at the face and clothes of the dead soldier and make comparisons.

In addition to making comparisions, you can also become a crime scene insvestigator by looking for more clues. So, super slueths, using the photograph of the soldier in the "sniper's nest" can you locate his cartridge box, his hat or a blanket? What other things can you find?

More later.

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References:
Frassanito, W. (1975). Gettysburg: A Journey in Time. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co.