Returning to photograph Gettysburg pushes him to 'to find new ways to see the old'

The first photographers were on the battlefield at Gettysburg just as the armies had moved on and burial details were left with the dead.

I arrived 130 years later.

Our experiences were, obviously, wildly different.

Where those pioneering photojournalists – they didn't even know the word, yet – found "ghastly horrors" of destruction and death, I found lush landscapes, massive monuments to heroism and quiet, reflective memorial space.

Since my first visit with a camera in the mid-1990s, I've been back regularly for a personal project to document the field. I don't think I'll ever consider it complete.

But my time at Gettysburg is usually very different from my job at Delaware Online/The News Journal, where landscapes are rarer than more lively subjects.

Returning to the same scenes year after year has pushed me to find new ways to see the old. I've moved from film to digital and 35mm to larger photographic formats that aren't terribly different from the cumbersome processes used by those pioneering photographers.

Most photographers will tell you the best time to photograph landscapes are in the early and late hours of the day. That certainly holds true at Gettysburg, where the nature of the field can change radically from the serene predawn hour to the tourist bus-filled midday.

Evening again brings a quiet and compelling light – and it's in those hours that I feel I can make my best images.

It's a cycle I've repeated dozens of times over the years – wake up well before dawn, shoot while the light is most compelling, retreat and leave the field for the majority of visitors who may never see it quite at its best. And again at dusk, working as late as possible. The greatest opportunity for me came as an artist-in-residence , when I could watch the field of Pickett's Charge from my window in a farmhouse on the battlefield over the course of nearly a month at work there.

My work at The News Journal has brought me to Gettysburg on a few occasions: The first was 24 years ago. I was there when Ken Burns helped unveil the Delaware State Memorial in 2000, and back earlier this year to catch up with fellow Delawarean Greg Gober and chronicle his personal passion at Gettysburg – the witness trees he's helping to identify and protect.

He and I are both drawn by the field that is at once near enough for a long day visit and tantalizingly too far away to make quick escapes. We have different interests at Gettysburg but share its call.

And, like anyone who spends more than a long weekend on the battlefield, we've spent far longer there than the soldiers did fighting the battle.

We've both seen how stewardship of the field can have a huge impact on the landscape. Our times experiencing Gettysburg have been over a brief span relative to its entire history but we've seen changes take place – either positive ones like restoration of battle-era structures or negative ones like unnecessary loss of witness trees.

Hiking in Delaware: Best, underrated hiking trails in Delaware to explore this fall

Learning our history: What's the oldest city in Delaware? It's complicated

The stories of the battle and the people remain the same, but the field does change.

The "harvest of death" – as one of the first Gettysburg photographers termed it – has long ago been reaped, the field restored to normal in many ways and, more importantly, converted to a shrine in others.

There were countless people – soldiers and civilians – directly touched by the battle. They all had their own story.

I try to tell something of what happened to them there on every visit.

Follow William Bretzger at instagram.com/gettysburgcamera or facebook.com/gettysburgcamera to see more images from Gettysburg .

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Returning to photograph Gettysburg pushes him to 'to find new ways to see the old'