Historical Landscape Photography Survey of Hamilton Fort

My service-learning project was intended to reach the public. Any one who wants to look at pictures of what Hamilton Fort looked like in 2006. Janet Seegmiller helped me come up with the title Historical Landscape Photography Survey of Hamilton Fort; I never would have been able to come up with that title on my own. It’s for young and old, students, faculty, and staff of Southern Utah University, it is for any person that has any interest in what farms looked like before they were subsidized into smaller acres of property. I want people to know about what these farms looked like in the past. I find things like old pictures or artifacts fascinating. Oddly enough sometimes I find other peoples history more intriguing than my own.

For me this project is for the farmers who are losing their farms to make room for more people to live out there. This is so they can look back and remember and/or mourn the loss of their farm. It would be difficult to lose a job especially when that is all you wanted or knew how to do, and to lose your home and large property so that other people could move onto it and in some cases, watch it be destroyed.

I found out about the project when, I was advised by my mother who has previously worked with Janet Seegmiller to contact her. I called Janet and she told me she needed someone to take pictures of farms in Hamilton Fort and if I had the time Kanaraville. I never made it to Kanaraville. However, I took quite a few pictures in Hamilton Fort. In total I took thirty-two pictures. I couldn’t take them all to once so I drove back and forth a few times. I took eleven pictures the first and second time and ten pictures the third time. I was there for two hours each time driving to different farms.

For the first hour I talked with Janet about the project and she gave it to me. During the time I met with her she told me she wanted me to photograph farms in Hamilton Fort. She gave me some copies of information on how to photograph landscapes from a professional. They second hour was reading the copies and learning to capture what was important to what your wanted to preserve. In my case it was farms and houses. The third hour I met back with Janet and we looked at maps of Hamilton Fort to give me an idea of where I would find the farms. It was helpful to look at the maps because I hadn’t been to Hamilton Fort until now. Hours four and five I drove around to see where everything was and to actually see it with my eyes instead of on paper I felt more comfortable knowing I knew the area better and seeing which farms I wanted to get on film. Hours six through twelve was me taking the pictures and saving them on my camera. As I said before I took eleven during one two hour session, eleven during the next two-hour session, and ten on the last two-hour session. Then I spent two hours writing this paper and the last hour giving the pictures to the Sherratt Library at Southern Utah University where they will be held forever or moved to another library. Hopefully they will stay close to the original subjects.

I originally planned to be finished with this project within the last week of March and the first week of April however it was cold for a long time and there was snow and I wanted to wait to get the farms without snow and I didn’t want to be out in the freezing cold weather. I waited until the third week of March because I am at least known to myself to be a procrastinator however the project is done and complete and I am proud of my accomplishment and I feel a little closer to my communitee in Cedar City, although I won’t stay in Cedar forever. I feel I understand it better now.

In order to achieve this project I needed my digital camera to take pictures with and my car to drive the eight miles to Hamilton Fort. I also needed a computer to type my paper and look at pictures on and a printer to print photos and my paper on. Without any technology this project would have taken three times as long to complete.

Sherri Singleton did something similar to my project however she traveled to Parowan and we talked about going together a few times but that seemed silly since my project was in the opposite direction. I felt confident that she would manage just fine without me and her project differed from mine a little anyway. Sherri wanted to take her project in a different direction than mine was going so I let her go with it and I went with how I felt my project should go and we both did fine.

As I said before in the other relevant information to this project when I was first learning about this project I was really excited to get out of the school environment for a short time and take pictures which I enjoy doing. Not to mention helping others preserve memories and also to help Janet in a situation where she needed someone ready and willing to take the pictures for her. It was also exciting to talk with some people about their farms one in particular. It’s the farm with a red roof and red barn; to me it’s the epitome of what at farm should look like. I didn’t think to ask the owner’s name or even how long they had lived in their home although she said she had lived there for quite some time (not her exact words).

I feel that I have gained a greater appreciation for my present communitee and that I have learned courage and better people skills to ask people’s permission to take pictures of their home. I also feel that I have learned a new skill. I like taking pictures and sometimes you have to wait for the right lighting to give the model the perfect look and effect for the picture you want to take. Sometimes I had to go back to farms to see if the light had changed. It hadn’t much but it was enough to get the idea of a look down and although I was on a timetable I would like to go back and capture these gorgeous places in their perfect light. On paper and words it doesn’t seem like I learned much. It’s difficult to describe what I’ve learned. I feel like I have accomplished more than words can say and I feel really great and positive about my project. I feel I did (with the exception of procrastination) a stand up job.