Happy New Year... Belated, Anyway...

Yes, I've been slackin'.

After getting settled in St. Augustine, I've found that I'm actually a Helluva' lot busier than I expected, and I'm not even shooting all the time. When I do shoot, it tends to be out of town, which requires a good deal of driving. My three biggest shoots were two football tournaments and a medical device convention. Yeah, the excitement there was palpable. All three of those were several hours from St. Augustine, though. They paid, but they were time intensive.

I've tried to make some time to shoot recreationally and, to some degree at least, I think I've accomplished that. My last gig had me shooting over 1,200 pictures over two days, and then having to get the photos to the client (who was on the west coast) a day earlier than previously agreed upon. So, it's been nice to go out, shoot, and then let the photos ferment on my hard drive for a while before even opening them up.

Now, it's no great secret that I enjoy visiting historic places. Not all of them are battlefields, or carry any military significance at all, but all conjure up thoughts and ideas about how life may have been, wherever I was, in the past.

One such place I visited recently was the Cowpens National Battlefield in Gaffney, South Carolina. The battle at Cowpens was a pivotal one in the fight for independence, and it didn't even last an hour. What was cool, though, was that our visit coincided with the 233rd anniversary of the battle. 

The visit to Cowpens lasted longer than the actual battle did.

Being that it's the actual battlefield, we were told that re-enactors don't play out the actual battle, simply out of respect. That being said, there was no shortage of re-enactors on hand to offer a look back into January of 1781.

It had been very, very cold in North Carolina the last week or so. It was as cold as Vegas can be hot, but decision was made to brave the elements and drive across the border into South Carolina.

The main entrance to Cowpens...

It actually looks pretty peaceful... Now...

A lone tree out in the middle of a field at Cowpens...

This could be almost anywhere. Yet, it's the site of one of the most important battles of the American Revolution...

Pretty self-explanatory...

 

The re-enactors all looked pretty good, and it was a little surprising to learn that many of them had been sleeping here at night instead of at home or a nearby hotel. No doubt they were dedicated to their craft, though:

 

 

Overall, it was a very, very cool visit to a place I'd never really considered visiting. Okay, so sometimes the re-encators can be a little... um... nerdy, but they're really the only ones who, I think, could convey the proper impression of what life here was like 233 years ago. Their nerdiness, you see, permits them to be so over-the-top with their depictions that you can't help but start to think that you're the one, in your jeans and Columbia jacket, carrying your iPhone, who's out of place.

Is this a "must see"? Well, perhaps not in the same way that someplace like Mt. Rushmore is a "must see" but, for anyone truly interested in the American Revolution, yeah, I think it is...