The Exploding Shell Photograph

On the same day he photographed Union gunboats in action, Confederate photographer George S. Cook also took this image (reproduced from Miller's Photographic History of the Civil War) that purports to show smoke from a shell exploding inside Fort Sumter. Although the negative apparently no longer exists and all prints of the image show moderate to heavy retouching, Cook seems to have captured at least the haze of the smoke from the shell. His photographic feats were reported several newspapers, both in the North and the South.

Click here to read the complete story of Cook's
combat action photography as it appeared in Military Images magazine.