Friend to Friend Monument Photo Wins a Top Award

The stark winter realism of bad weather in Gettysburg "made for good photography" of the Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial Monument with dripping pendants of icicles. That's what the editors of Popular Photography & Imaging Magazine said of a dramatic picture taken by Chris E. Heisey of Mechanicsburg and awarded him third place in the magazine's "Your Best Shot" competition announced in the May issue.

Heisey, whose biography notes that he is recognized as America's most published Civil War battlefield photographer, explained in his submission to the magazine that one December morning, he saw the wonderful effects of an ice storm and by the dawn's early light, he captured the ice-coated Masonic Friend to Friend Monument at the national cemetery with his tripod-mounted Nikon F100 and 28-105mm f/4 Nikkor lens. Exposure, 1/30 sec. at f/11; film, Kodak Elite Chrome 100.

The photographer, whose photos have been in more than 70 publications worldwide, is a native Pennsylvanian who grew up less than an hour from Gettysburg. He still lives near Harrisburg, where he works as a photographer and writer for The Catholic Witness, a newspaper published by the Roman Catholic Diocese.