Tara knew her photo was ‘money shot’;
so did her mom who made prize possible

Sometimes, mothers do know best.

Such was the case of a photo Nicholasville’s Tara Baldwin took at Camp Nelson.

“I knew it was a ‘money shot’ when I took it,” Tara said, “but I didn’t do anything with it. However, Mom, my biggest fan, submitted it to the 2012 Civil War Trust Photography Contest.”

As a result, the photo – “One Nation Under God” – was judged the winner in the People on Battlefields Category.

The winning photo shows a young girl standing underneath a gigantic American flag that is being unfolded.

Baldwin, a member of Camp Nelson’s Honor Guard, is an Army wife and mother and a confessed “military buff” – including the Civil war. May 14 was a cold day at Camp Nelson and Tara said she “just happened to be there” when the Patriot Flag – honoring the fallen on 9-11-01 – was passing through Kentucky. The huge flag is 30-feet high and 58-feet wide and began its trek through all 50 states in August 2011. In addition to Camp Nelson, the flag also was unveiled in Pikeville June 26.

“It took about 500 people to open the flag and I stood back, wanting to get a flat shot  with the heads of the people showing,” Baldwin said. “Children starting running underneath it and this one little girl began jumping up and down trying to touch the stars.”

Tara had her Cannon XL camera set on automatic and instinctively snapped the shutter.

“I had taken hundreds of photos that day,” Tara said. “As the flag waved up and down from all the people it took to hold it up in the wind, I knelt down … and as my camera snapped, I said out loud to myself, ‘I think I just got the money shot.’”

Two fire trucks were required to raise the flag and it was mounted on a ladder truck for all to see.

Baldwin has lived in Nicholasville for 14 years and became active in photography in 2000, taking photos when her children were “playing ball.” She’s the mother of five boys and one girl and has two grandchildren.

Gettysburg, Fort Screven, Old Fort Jackson and Fort Pulaski are other Civil War battlefields and sites that Tara has photographed.

“My favorite would have to be Camp Nelson,” she commented. “It’s right down the road from me and I feel partial to it due to the fact that it’s not one of the most popular battlefields and lots of its stories are unknown to the nation.”