Zivilschutz

This past week Brent had his annual Zivilschutz duty (military replacement civil service). He's part of the cultural preservation wing (KGS), and helps to maintain cultural places and items in the Kanton (state) of Solothurn. While we were supposed to go to a tiny mountain chapel named Mieschegg, our plans changed to the village ofWelschenrohr where, incidentally, Brent's grandfather was stationed in the military during WWII. Brent waschosen to be the photographer for the week, since it's a part of his work at Kilchzimmer. Tasked with photographing the items of the church, which is undergoing renovations, he took pictures of wooden carvings, candle stands, figures, goblets, garments, flags and other items associated with the catholic church. Each item had to be photographed with an over, under and regular exposure and had to be cataloged, measured and journaled. In order to obtain the most detail, the stain-glassed windows were photographed with as many as seven different exposures. At first, I was using an older Canon 12 megapixel camera with a 24-40mm zoom. Then on Thursday, the KGS commander for the Solothurn brought me the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III (22 Megapixel) with a 28-300mm zoom lens. It was a little pricier and heavier than the Nikon D70s he uses at Kilchzimmer! He worked with several studio lights, an infrared trigger, a photo box and good ol' Styrofoam. With each photo we needed to have a ruler, color balance chart and catalog numbering sheet.

Brent's already been tapped for next year's service, doing similar work for a week and will also be taking part in a training day, which of course will help his photography skills with CEF®.