Military – PR Photography Paul David Drabble

German Military Cemetery Staffordshire

Oct 042020

German Military Cemetery Staffordshire

Many of you will know I am quite interested history, especially military history. While doing a little research I discovered a German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire Britain. Not something I had ever considered but probably should have. All wars result in casualties on both sides and while there were no land battles in Britain, there was the war in the air and at sea, not mention Prisoners Of War.

My interest piqued I took a trip to Staffordshire to shoot some images at the Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof. The cemetery contains the graves of 2143 soldiers of the first world war and 2786 soldiers of the second world war. All the headstones are very similar but unlike British CWGC headstones they don’t seem to say, with any consistency, which branch of the armed forces the personnel served with or their unit, though they do indicate rank.

In 1959 the UK German government came to an agreement for the care of the graves of German nationals who lost their lives in the United Kingdom during the two World Wars. The result was the Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof at Cannock Chase Staffordshire. This resulted in the transfer of all graves in the UK, not already effectively maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, to this central cemetery. This transfer of graves of German servicemen and civilian internees from both world wars was arranged by the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge). The inauguration and dedication took place on the 10th June 1967 and is immaculately maintained by the CWGC.

A few notable graves to look out for amongst the photos for are….

Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Bernhard Wilhelm Busch

holder of the Pour le Merite (Blue Max) and Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. He commanded troops during the invasion of Poland, the Battle of France and the invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa). His final command was Army Group Northwest. His task, to stop Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s advance into Germany. Busch surrendered to Monty on 3 May 1945 and died of heart failure in a prisoner of war camp in Aldershot, England.

SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Maximilian Karl Otto von Herff.

Originally in the Wehrmacht Herff was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1939. He served with the German Afrika Korps, was then promoted to Colonel and commanded “Kampfgruppe von Herff”. In June 1941 was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for his service in North Africa. He transferred to the Waffen-SS and joined the Nazi Party in 1942. From August 1942-1945 Von Herff was ‘Chef fur Personalhauptamt’. The man in charge of the office responsible maintaining the service records for all commissioned Waffen-SS and Allgemeine-SS personnel. Captured in 1945, and held at Grizedale POW camp he died in Conishead Priory Military Hospital as the result of a Stroke.

Four Graves Containing the Remains of Four Zeppelin Crews

Tablet marks the four graves containing the remains of Four Zeppelin crews Shot down during World war one with each Crew being buried together.

A small black and white photo at the bottom of the headstone marking the last resting place of Eugen Geyer and Franz Andele. Both were members of the German Luftwaffe

Cannock Chase War Cemetery Staffordshire

Before reaching the actual German Military Cemetery you will encounter Cannock Chase War Cemetery which is closer to the road. Cannock Chase War Cemetery contains 97 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, most of them New Zealanders, and 286 German burials. There are also three burials from the Second World War.

Images © Paul David Drabble
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Remembrance Sunday Barnsley

Nov 102019

The People of Barnsley turn out in force for Remembrance Sunday 10th November 2019 in Photographs

Barnsleys Remembrance Sunday Service

Nov 122017

Barnsleys Remembrance Sunday Service and March past held at the town’s war memorial situated outside the Town hall on Church street.

Remembrance Sunday Barnsley

Nov 132016

Remembrance Sunday service, two minutes silence and parade held at Barnsley War Memorial outside the Town Hall – In Pictures

Remembrance Sunday Service Barnsley

Nov 082015

The people of Barnsley were out in force again this year along side Veterans organisations, cadets, military units and families take part in the Remembrance Sunday service in Barnsley South Yorkshire.

London Poppy Display “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red”

Sep 102015

Part of the London poppy display from the Tower of London massive art installatio,n marking 100 years since the start of the First World War. The Arch segment, also Know as “The Wave” has been installed on The Yorkshire Sculpture Parks Cascade Bridge. The installation was opened to the public for the first time on September 2015 and will remain in place until January 2016.

Fuji X-Pro1 60mm F2.4 Real World Update

Jul 272015

I used the Fuji X-Pro1 60mm f2.4 at couple of 1940’s events over the last couple of weekends, Kelham Island Sheffield and East Park Hull. Probably the most challenging of things to shoot were the Spitfire/Hurricane Flypast at the Hull Veterans weekend. I intended to use my Nikon D700 with 80-200mm but was caught out after being told the flypast would be Sunday. It actually happened very late on Saturday. I only had time to flick to AFC and shoot fortunately the camera was set as described in my last post resulting in the aircraft images included below. The exposures were f11 1/350 or better all at ISO 400.

Kelham Island & Hull Veterans 1940’s – Images by Paul Drabble

WW2 German Halftrack from the AA’s latest Advert Towed Away

Jul 072015

A World War Two German Sd.Kfz 251 Halftrack named “Magda” that appeared in the new AA advert had to be towed away when one of its front wheels fell off in front of a packed audience at the “Yorkshire Wartime Experience” on Sunday Afternoon (5 June 2015). The event is billed as “The North’s Premier Military Vehicle & Re-enactment Event” and its venue at Hunsworth Lane Hunsworth West Yorkshire was also the location where the AA’s first new television commercial in almost ten years was filmed.
Weighing in at almost 8 Tons, the post war Halftrack, of the type that would have been used as German troop carrier, required a fellow collectors Scammell explorer, aptly named “Dooleys Dragster”, to drag the disabled armoured personnel carrier from the arena. When asked by the shows commentator about calling the AA vehicle owner Paul Hilditch replied “No I should have done” No one was hurt in the incident.

When Tweeted about the incident Edmund King President of the AA responded

“Wheel fell off WW2 German Halftrack that appeared in AA Ad https://t.co/qU5Ssjc59e” via @NWW2A Should have called AA out. #wefixanything”

— Edmund King (@AAPresident) July 7, 2015

Images and story Available for publication via Caters News Agency

Rotherham’s Armed Forces Day June 20th

Jun 222015

Rotherham Armed Forces Day June 20th

Make Modern Photographs Vintage

Aug 292013

Make Modern Photographs Vintage- With the increase in popularity of vintage events, 1940’s weekends and re-enacting seems to have led to a trend for ageing digital photographs and trying to make them look like period images. To help photographers who want their photographs to look like film from the 40’s here are a few tips to make modern photographs vintage

The first problem is image quality. Most modern digital cameras handled correctly produce images of significantly higher quality than than their equivalent from the 1940’s. My method of knocking down the image quality is to take my original image, size it down by 50% or more then interpolate it back up to its original size. This can still leave the image too sharp if it is I use a blur filter to soften the image further.

Next desaturate the image but desaturation alone tends to give a harsh and crisp black and white, which leans towards having a blueish tinge. Using colour balance tools to add yellow (or remove blue depending upon how you look at it) and add red will allow you to get a warmer tone that you can make look anywhere from a natural looking black and white through to a sepia tone.

Now add the film grain effect. Create a new layer which will need to be in overlay mode or similar with 100% opacity of middle or 50% grey. On this new layer you carry out two steps.

First add noise, how much will depend up how grainy you want your final image to look, again I start around 50% however make sure the noise is monochrome, there would be no colour noise in a 1940’s B&W photograph.

Second step is to blur the noise so it looks less like sharp dots and more resembles real film grain Gaussian blur is my preferred choice usually around 2 or three pixels.

At this point it’s worth comparing your manipulated image with genuine pictures from the period to make sure you have a reasonable match for colour tone and softness before merging the layers and moving onto cropping.

I prefer to crop either the 3:2 proportion of 35mm format or the square format of 6×6 you could also use 10×8 but a give away that your image may not be “period” would be to crop it at A4 as this probably would not have been a popular shape of the time unless you are going on to mock-up a period magazine cover. Once cropped its time to add a white border I add a 10% border relative to the cropped photograph This can be done by using something like the “Canvas Size” tool in Photoshop or you could just create a new plain white image document in your editor then drag your manipulated photograph into the middle. Once the border is sorted for that final touch of authenticity you can use a softening tool like adobes blur tool to soften the really hard edge between the beginning of the image and the white border and really make modern Photographs Vintage.

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