That's a nice thought. I do a fair number of HABS/HAER jobs for hire, but locally I'm more likely to volunteer my time and donate the negatives to our active local historical association. There are quite a lot of locally important historic buildings that slip through the regulatory cracks, and go away without little notice. I hate to think that there will be no memory of these buildings and sites, and so our local organization knows to contact me if they hear of anything, as they have no funds for such work and no way to force anyone to hire me. However, they often can provide me with access to some pretty interesting places, which is a reward of its own. I think that it would be wonderful for other LF photographers to have similar relationships. Getting even one or two exterior images into a public archive will help to preserve these memories for future generations.
That reminds me. I reallllly need to get my butt down to the local Carnegie Library and talk to them about HABS/HAER stuff. I am not sure if things just aren't online, but there isn't even a listing for my county in the LOC database. A ton of smaller counties nearby have photos. I'm curious if somewhere along the way a folder was lost. There's a lot of historic buildings that I would love to document.
I don't know its current state, but Herkimer Home just East of Little Falls, NY was the home of the Revolutionary War General Herkimer and had been open for tours and special historical events. I remember hearing it was closing to the public a few years ago, but I don't know if it's been reopened or not. It would be a good project all by itself. I grew up in Little Falls, but live 8 hours away now.
Historic buildings are sort of my specialty.
The Henry House on the grounds of the Manassas battlefield in Manassas, Virginia. The present house was built in 1870 to replace the original one on the hill. That original house saw fighting in the immediate vicinity during the first Civil War battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. During that battle the Henry Family matriarch, Judith Henry was killed, the only civilian casualty of the battles at Manassas. In 1940 the Henry House was donated to the National Park Service to become part of Manassas Battlefield Park.
From my ongoing "Farmscapes of the Civil War" project. Shot on a foggy, rainy day in January of 2016.
Technical details:
Toko wood 4x5.
150mm F6.3 Rodenstock Geronar lens in Copal BT shutter.
Arista EDU Ultra 400 (re-branded Fomapan) @ 400.
1/8th second at F32.
Pyrocat HD at 1:1:100 dilution for 11 minutes @ 20 degrees Celsius in Jobo Multitank 5 with 2509N sheet film reels with drum placed on Unicolor Uniroller 352 auto-reversing rotary base.
Negative scanned with Epson 4990 on holders with ANR glass.
GreggObst.com
LF 8x10/5x7/4x5, MF and 35mm shooter.
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