John Burns Photograph With Magnified Detail

Gettysburg Greg

First Sergeant
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Jun 6, 2010
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Decatur, Illinois
burns combo1.jpg

Apparently, by July 15th, the legend of John Burns was already spreading far and wide. That was the day that Mathew Brady stopped at the Burns' house and took several photographs of Burns still showing evidence of his three wounds. In the uncropped version on the left, Burns and his wife are seen on the upstairs porch, John is sitting with his crutches on one side and his flintlock rifle on the other while his wife stands in the doorway. Not nearly as noticeable are the two men seen sitting on the side steps. The close up of them on the right reveals that one of the men is Mathew Brady along with his vested assistant who is featured in several other Gettysburg photos. Of additional interest in the close up is Brady's portable darkroom standing behind the Burns' well.
 
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This is such agreat picture for close-up adventures. I think we found a housefly on a pant leg, once!
Yes, @Bee, we are fortunate that Brady recorded his Gb photographs in stereo on large glass plates that enable us to see them in very high resolution. The pic you mentioned in which you can pick out a fly on Burns leg was the shot he took of Burns sitting underneath the staircase.
 

This one is for you @Gettysburg Greg : I sat down to dinner with a few Civil War photo collectors/experts/photographers, tonight. The main topic of the night: HOW MANY FLIES ARE THERE IN THE CLOSE UP OF BURNS!!! How is THAT for appetite stimulating chatter? Their number was 15. No where else in my life would there be a time and a place to have an intense conversation about the number of flies in a photograph!!!:roflmao:
 
I would say that is a little bit too much of an enlargement of an image. To each his own though. I'm surprised they weren't counting his nose hairs, or the hairs sticking out of his ear or ears. They sound like they need a real hobby. I had a professor once who taught European History. He would barely mention the battles, only the diplomacy. He later told us his passion was writing about Napoleonic era Naval Medicine. We all wished he was teaching that instead of European History, it was so boring.
 
This one is for you @Gettysburg Greg : I sat down to dinner with a few Civil War photo collectors/experts/photographers, tonight. The main topic of the night: HOW MANY FLIES ARE THERE IN THE CLOSE UP OF BURNS!!! How is THAT for appetite stimulating chatter? Their number was 15. No where else in my life would there be a time and a place to have an intense conversation about the number of flies in a photograph!!!:roflmao:
Hello, @Bee. Some of the most interesting details I have found in these hi-res pics are totally unrelated to the battle. Garry Adelman makes this point very well in his video presentation I included in a recent post. In fact, he covers the increasing number of flies found in the image of Burns. originally two were found, then five, and, as you say, it is up to 15 now. If interested, Garry's video is linked to in my November 12th post related to wagon tracks found in Brady's photo from LRT.
 
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