Wednesday, February 19, 2025

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: VII

Georgia, 10/16/2014. The day she came to us.

Blog Note: If you're getting a little impatient with all the doggy posts and have been wondering "When is this guy going to get back to photography?" I have two things to say: First, this will be the last post about dogs for a while. Second, what I have been doing all along is giving an object lesson about one of the very most important functions of photography: using it to document and enhance your life.

After the deaths of Rusty and Honey, Louise and I grieved for them. Especially Louise. I said, "Let's ask God to send us a new dog. So we prayed.

Our farm was about a half-mile back on Sourwood Lane, a private road that branched off Andrews Lane in McLemore Cove. Back in the spring, Louise had seen a small, orange, long-haired dog hanging around the entrance to our lane, but couldn't entice her to come. Debbie and Jeff, who lived across Andrews Lane from our property were able to get her to come live with them. They named her Georgia. She had a litter of four puppies, which they gave away. Sadly, in early fall, Debbie died suddenly.

Georgia would go constantly from room to room looking for her friend. To make things worse, she was not yet housebroken. Jeff determined to send her to the pound, and told his mother. She said, "No, don't do that," and called Louise. And that's how Georgia came to live with us, just three weeks after Honey died.

She is, we think, a long-haired Chihuahua with a mixture of Corgi and perhaps some Pomeranian. Mostly, she is herself. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as the saying goes.

How's that for a dog's life?

She has been with us for more than ten years now, and is a full member of our household, sleeping between us in our king-sized bed. She enjoyed living in our 5th-wheel trailer, and is now enjoying dominating the other dogs in our townhouse community. Although she is at least 11, possibly 12 years old, she is as frisky as ever and shows few signs of aging. We hope she will be with us for a long time to come.

She knows she has it good.

Photos were made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera and the Olympus Zuiko 45mm lens or the Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography digital photography Olympus E-M5 digital camera Olympus Zuiko 45mm lens Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens family history dogs Chihuahuas

Monday, February 17, 2025

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: VI

Honey and Rusty both were retrievers. They loved to swim.

Having expounded at length in my previous post about my philosophy of photography, which is, as photography critic Bill Jay wrote, "The Thing Itself," it's time for a change. This post is going to the dogs.

For ten years we enjoyed the companionship of the pair we called our "big dogs." Honey and Rusty were with us in just about everything we did on our little farm.

They were with us when we went snow-boarding. . .

Or when we were just hanging out by the pool. They were our buddies.

Honey loved to lie on our back doorstep and show the world her beautiful profile. . .

And Rusty had his own noble profile. He was the sweetest of dogs.

By the summer of 2014, Honey was 14 years old and was noticeably slowing down. Each day, Rusty would nuzzle her until she got up, then they would go off on their morning patrol of our property and the neighborhood.

In late August it became obvious that Rusty was having some distress. By Labor Day weekend, he was in severe pain. We think he had stomach cancer. He died a day or two later as I was taking him to be put to sleep. I will always deeply regret that I didn't take him sooner.

Without Rusty to make her get up and keep going, Honey failed rapidly. She died three weeks later. We buried them both in a corner of the pasture in front of our house and planted a Japanese magnolia tree on their grave.

We will always remember the faithful friends of some of the best days of our lives.

Most of the photos were made with a Canon EOS 5D Classic digital camera and various Canon lenses.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography digital photography Canon EOS %d Classic camera Canon EF lenses family history dogs

Friday, February 14, 2025

Photography Is about What Is

Old barn near Collegedale, Tennessee.

The distinctive thing about photography, the feature that distinguishes it from all the other arts, is its direct and essential connection to reality. Simply put, you can't photograph something unless it exists. Photography is about what is.

A painter can make a painting that may or may not resemble reality, but it will have no intrinsic connection to reality. Someone can use AI to make a creation that looks like a photograph in every detail. It may be very well done, but it is not a photograph.

A photograph is a picture made by light rays. The word "photograph" is made from two Greek words: "photos,"which means "light," and 'graphos," which means "to write." So, to photograph means "to write with light."

A photograph is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that really exists onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that has objective reality are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is "writing with light." The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality.

The unique purpose of photography is to show what things look like in the real world. As distinguished from other visual media, the art of photography is primarily the art of seeing. The great photographer Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: “The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."

Painters, those who alter and/or combine photographs, and those who use AI to create "photographs" will tell you that they are only limited by their imaginations. And that's precisely the point -- they are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can imagine. But photography goes beyond human imagination. AI can never replace photography, because photography is the art of wonder.

Who could have imagined a laughing horse?

The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things that are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense; that is, no one would ever have thought of such a thing happening. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of life, there it is.

"I can do a beautiful illustration, but it doesn't have that 'instant of wonder' that a photograph will have." (Art Director Tony Anthony, quoted in Photo District News.)

Photography shows us things that lie beyond our imagination and compel our amazement because they really happened. It revels in the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of life. It is the most powerful purely visual medium ever created.

Our work as photographers is to isolate and clarify the things we see so that others may through us see in a new way the world that is around them.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography philosophy of photography AI

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: V

Bounce with our grandsons Nathan and Michael. "Will someone get these kids offa' me!?

We'll get back to Bounce in a few minutes, but first, I want to introduce Honey. In early 2000, one of the doctors with whom Louise worked in the emergency room at Hutchinson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe gave us a puppy. Her mother was a purebred Labrador, and her father, a purebred German Shepherd. When I first saw her, I said, "She's a honey!" And so she was -- a honey of a dog; also our longest-lived one. She lived to be almost 15. She had the gentle nature of a Labrador, but when she thought it was necessary she could produce a most authentic German Shepherd bark. Honey was sweet-natured, but always a serious dog.

Honey-Puppy, as she arrived at her new home. She was always a serious dog.

In 2002, Don and Kim, our son and daughter-in-law gave us a Boston Terrier named Bounce. He had a most distinctive personality and brought a lot of enjoyment into our lives, even though our time with him was brief.

One afternoon, as Louise and I were clearing some brush from the pasture down near the creek, Bounce followed Honey to the creek. Sometime later, when it was time to go back to the house, Honey came, but Bounce was not with her. We found him several days later. He had drowned. We buried him beside Max, with much grief.

Rusty and his best friend, Louise.

About a year later, Louise noticed a golden retriever type dog hanging around our mailbox for several days as she would come and go. One day, he followed her home. She drove into the garage, and before she could close the door, he came in. She opened the car door and he laid his head on her lap and looked at her with soulful eyes. He was our dog from that moment on. We named him Rusty. He was the sweetest dog we have ever owned.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography family history dogs

Monday, February 10, 2025

The Backroads Traveler: LaFayette, Georgia

The 1836 Marsh-Warthen House, LaFayette.

LaFayette is a small city in, and the county seat of, Walker County in the extreme northwest corner of Georgia. It's also the Georgia small town with which I am most familiar, because I lived in Walker County for 33 years.

Founded as Chattooga in 1835, as the Cherokee nation was struggling unsuccessfully to hold on to their homeland, the town was renamed LaFayette in 1836, in honor of the French Marquis who fought with the American forces in the Revolutionary War. Current population is about 7,000.

The surrounding county has a fair amount of industry, including the Roper Corporation, which makes GE appliances. Much of the area is given over to farming, with many beef and dairy operations.

LaFayette, by the way, is pronounced "LaFAYette," not the conventional "LaFayETTE." However, the downtown square is pronounced "LaFayETTE" Square. Go figure.

The Marsh House, also known as the Marsh-Warthen House, was built in 1836 by Spencer Stewart Marsh, a prominent businessman who founded a major cotton mill in Trion. The house was owned by his descendants for 150 years.

During the Civil War, Union cavalrymen stabled their horses in the house. Bullet holes from the Battle of LaFayette are still visible in the walls. Check their website for the tour schedule, because it varies considerably according to the time of year. http://marshhouseoflafayette.org/. 423-994-8485.

The Chattooga Academy.

The Chattooga Academy was built in 1836 of bricks made at Rock Spring, a few miles north of LaFayette. Believed to be the oldest brick schoolhouse in Georgia, it cost $815 to build and has one large room on each floor with a chimney at each end. The Presbyterians used it as their meeting house until their church was built in 1848.

The LaFayette First Presbyterian Church.

Just north of the town square is the First Presbyterian Church. Erected in 1848 in the Greek Revival architectural style so popular in the early and middle 19th century, it is still an active church. It served as a hospital for both Confederate and Union wounded after the Battle of LaFayette in June of 1864.

A TRIBUTE TO A TIME THAT WAS.

Breakfast at Susie’s on the square. A LaFayette tradition for many years.

The name of Susie’s Café on the square in LaFayette was officially Susie’s Sunset Café. But I always thought it should have been named Susie’s Sunrise Café, because the early morning sun streamed in through the plate-glass front and illuminated everything all the way to the back wall.

Susie’s had booths down each side for those who preferred a feeling of relative privacy, but it also had a couple of long tables down the center where lawyers, businessmen, farmers, factory workers, and gas station attendants ate their breakfasts together and chewed the fat (no reflection on the bacon) in peaceable equanimity.

Susie's is gone now, and places like it in other small towns are a dwindling species. Increasingly, you will find the old timers' morning coffee club at a Hardy's or McDonald's. A sad sign of the times.

The photos: The Marsh House was photographed with a Fuji X-T20 and the Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens. For the Chattooga Academy photo, I used an Olympus E-M5 with the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm lens, and for the church, the same camera with a Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens. The photograph in Susie's Café was made with a small, quiet, Olympus SPn rangefinder camera loaded with color negative film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography digital photography travel Fuji X-T20 camera Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens Olympus E-M5 camera Walker County, Georgia Marsh-Warthen House Chattooga Academy Panasonic Lumis G-Vario 12-32mm lens Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens film photography Olympus SPn rangefinder camera

Friday, February 7, 2025

The Photographer's Eye

Demented spider. GA. Highway 193, Walker County.

(Adapted and expanded from a post on September 15, 2021.)

What does it mean to have a photographer's eye?

I think the indispensable ability is the ability to notice things. Most of us bumble through life half-aware of our surroundings. And then we pick up a camera and expect to start seeing interesting things. It doesn't work that way. We have to develop the habit of being aware of the world around us at all times, not just on demand. That's the difference between photographers who regularly produce good pictures and those who, infrequently or never, have a lucky accident.

Ford 8N tractor in shed, U.S. Highway 19, Lumpkin County, Georgia.

After the ability to notice things comes a sense of light. Very often, it's the light itself that makes a subject noticeable. Learn to study light -- observe how it falls at different times of the day and different seasons of the year until you can almost feel the way it works with your subject. This is a lifelong learning process and I'm still working at it.

Bottoms up! Diving swans on Berry College campus, Rome, Georgia.

The third element is composition -- the ability to arrange the subject in the camera's viewfinder so that whatever it is that caught your eye stands forth most clearly. If necessary, zoom your lens or move, so that your frame is clean and uncluttered, including only the essential elements that tell the story.

Good street photographers such as Elliott Erwitt and Henri Cartier-Bresson have an almost magical ability to simultaneously notice both a subject and the light and compose a photograph in an instant. Others, myself included, are not so fast. But not all kinds of photography demand such quick reflexes. Jay Maisel notices and photographs an incredible number of interesting subjects. Some of them do demand quick reflexes, but many of them are just sitting there, as it were, waiting for someone to notice and photograph them.

As Robert Louis Stevenson said,

"The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

Photos: The spider: Canon EOS A2, 28-105mm RF lens, Fujichrome 100 film. The tractor: Canon EOS 5D Classic, 24-85mm EF lens. The swans: Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 85mm lens, Kodachrome 64 film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography photography techniques film photography Canon EOS A2 film camera Canon 28-105mm EF lens Fujichrome 100 film Walker County, Georgia digital photography Canon EOS 5D Classic Canon 24-85mm EF lens Olympus OM2n film camera Zuiko 85mm lens Kodachrome 64 film

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: IV

Max looks on as Louise pets a heifer.

In April, 1992, a black dog appearing to be a spaniel/labrador mix wandered into Deer Run Farm while we were in the process of bringing in a larger mobile home. (Don was in Iraq and Kim, his wife, had come to live with us.)

A similar dog, but female, had been adopted by our good neighbors the Parris's about a week before. They named her Maria, and at first I thought this dog was Maria. Then I noticed he was a male, friendly, and with a jaunty air. I thought, this fellow is a maximum dog. So he became Mr. Maximum Dog, but Max to his friends. And he was our friend for the next twelve years.

Which makes it all the more upsetting to me that this is the best photo I can find of him without going to the garage and digging through boxes of prints from the '90s.

Gladys and Max watch as Louise pets Freckles.

In those years we briefly had two other dogs -- Gladys, a small, collie-type, and Brigit, a border collie. Gladys was a nice dog, but she disappeared. We believe our other neighbor killed her for running his cattle. We think Brigit ran away, although we have never known for sure.

Max had demodetic mange, but thanks to Louise's loving care, lived a long, happy life. With sadness, we had him put to sleep when his life became burdensome to him.

I actually credit Max for saving our marriage. We finally sold our old house and were able to build on the farm in 1993 and '94. We had much difficulty with the contractor, and sometimes the tensions in our home were so great we could hardly speak to each other. So it became, "Max, tell your mother. . ." or Max, tell your father. . ."

Truly a maximum dog. I'll keep looking for a better picture.

More to come.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags: photography family history dogs

This blog is about photography, about travel, and about life. I write about the tools, techniques, art, and philosophy of photography, some of the places I've been, things that have happened in my life, and whatever else crosses my mind. I write the blog I would like to read, if someone else were writing it. My domain is the old, the odd, and the ordinary; the beautiful, the abandoned, and the about to vanish away. I am a visual historian of an earlier America and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of life.

Photographs and text © 2011-2024 David B. Jenkins