The Blizzard of '93

Chickamauga Creek and Pigeon Mountain after the Great Blizzard of 1993. 

Hard to believe, but just a few days ago, March 13th, marked the 30th anniversary of the Great Blizzard of 1993. The storm covered much of the South and dumped a foot of snow on Deer Run Farm. Other places got even more. The storm was driven by gale-force winds that twisted limbs out of trees and brought with it near-zero temperatures.

Our electricity was out for a week. This was before our house was built, and we had only a kerosene heater in our trailer. We hung blankets to close off everything but our bedroom, bundled up in the rest of the blankets, and rode it out as best we could. Refrigeration, at least, was not a problem.

We had three beautiful young heifers that year that Louise had made her pets. George Queener's enormous Brahma bull had jumped the fence and bred one of them, so of course it was during the storm that she went into labor. She was too young to be a mother, and the calf was so large it would have been a challenge for a mature cow to birth. Our vet, Dr. Marty Rogers, somehow made it through the storm to give her a shot to ease her pain and hold off birth contractions until he could come back in daylight to perform a Caesarean Section. We spent much of the night in the barn with her and our neighbors, Ken and Sarah Parris, inside a ring of hay bales to break the wind.

The next day Marty came back with his assistant and they did the Caesarean. Sadly, the calf died just as he was completing the surgery. Our calves usually weighed 70-75 pounds at birth. This one weighed about 135. Another of the three heifers was also bred by that bull and died in birth a few months later.

For us, it was a sad loss. But that's life -- and death -- on a farm.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Spring Comes to Sourwood Lane

 The entrance to Deer Run Farm, 225 Sourwood Lane.

 

Louise went to Denver in March/April of 2012 to care for an elderly friend who had knee replacement surgery. (This despite the fact that she herself had both knees replaced just the previous November.) 

We had an usually beautiful spring that year and I had a new camera, so I decided I would make some photos around the place and send them to her. I'd like to share a few of them with you.

(All photos with an Olympus E-PL1 with a 14-42mm lens.)

 

Dogwoods by the fence line.

 

Cattle in the barnlot.

 

Iris in the Curve Garden.

 

The Redbud outside our kitchen window.

 

Iris petal in lavender.

Curve Garden rosebud.

 

Blueberries

 

The rhododendron by our kitchen window.

 

Phlox on the rocks. 

 

Stump and spring flowers.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

A Tour of Rome

Premature baby in the neonatal ICU

In the early 1980s I received an assignment to provide photography for a book about Rome, Georgia. It was to cover all facets of life in Rome -- history, business, culture, healthcare, education, points of interest, etc., as a guide for newcomers to the city.

Times were very different then, and I was welcomed just about everywhere I went. (Perhaps the fact that my project was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce had something to do with that?) I photographed the campus of Berry College and the Martha Berry Mansion, interesting buildings in the city, various businesses which had purchased ads in the book, even in the hospitals, where I photographed their latest technology, such as the CT Scanner, which was fairly new at the time. I was even welcomed in the nursery, and, even as totally unthinkable as it is in today's environment, the neonatal ICU.

Times have indeed changed, and not for the better. I'm glad I have lived my life when I did, before fear and suspicion raised so many barriers in our world.

After all that, not enough ads were sold to fund the book, so the publisher dropped it. Fortunately, I was paid for my work and I have the pictures.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

The Sun Sets on the Railroad to McLemore Cove

These railroad tracks in McLemore Cove appeared in a scene in Water for Elephants.

One of the many things I loved about living in McLemore Cove was the occasional sight of an old locomotive chugging its way down from Chattanooga into the Cove, towing a few cars to or from a factory near the Kensington community.

The tracks were once part of the TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) Railroad that ran 91 miles from Chattanooga through northwest Georgia to Gadsden, Alabama. The TAG was absorbed into the Southern Railway System in 1971 and most of the route was abandoned, but the northernmost 23 miles, from Chattanooga to Kensington, continued to be operated by the Chattanooga and Chickamauga Railway until the factory closed in 2009. Subsequently, some of the tracks were torn up.

When we began living in the Cove, we found that the area was known to many of the older people in Chattanooga as Kensington because, for many years the railroad ran excursions to a hotel in the Kensington community called The Kensington House. The hotel is now a private home, and about all that's left of Kensington is a fire station.

Going north from the fire station about a hundred yards, the tracks cross Kensington Lane. This section of tracks is on your immediate left at that point. This is the way they looked in a scene in the movie Water for Elephants, parts of which were filmed in the Cove.

Sorry to be a day late posting this. Life got in the way.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

This Is No Bull!

Looks like one, but looks can be deceiving.

I think I've mentioned before that raising cattle might seem to be an unusual sideline for a professional photographer and a nurse practitioner, but we did it, for 24 years until the handsome fellow above ended our career as cattle farmers.

After overgrazing our land with too many cattle for a few years, we realized that our 28 acres could only support six cows year-round. Each spring we would buy a young bull and put him in with our cows for two months, then sell him. That way, breeding our cows was essentially free.

This was our last bull. He came from a good breeder and was one of the best-looking bulls we ever owned. We put him with our cows for the usual two months, sold him to a farmer on Sand Mountain, and settled back for nature to take its course.

Spring calving season came eventually, and with it -- no calves! Our handsome bull had been shooting blanks!

Louise and I had been debating for some time and asking the Lord for an indication of when we should get out of the cattle business. By this time I was 75, and she was worried that I would get hurt working with the cattle. 

Since we were undecided about what to do, we did not buy another bull at that time, as we normally would have. We had a prize heifer that was just coming into breeding age, and one day she decided to go looking for male companionship on a neighboring farm. It was a week before we found her. Another neighbor volunteered to tranquilize her, tie her up, load her on his truck, and bring her home.

He got her tranquilized and tied a rope around her neck, but before he could get her loaded, something stampeded the herd she was hanging out with. She woke up,ran to the end of her rope, and broke her neck.

That was a sad loss. We took it as a sign that it was time to get out. That same farmer bought the rest of our herd, and after 24 years, we were finished. We hung on to our farm for nine more years, but it was never the same without the cattle.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

An Advertising Photograph with Amateur Models

 Two Women

This photograph of two women, presumably a young woman and her grandmother, is one of my favorite photos from the extensive advertising and promotional campaign I photographed for the launching of Women's East Pavilion, a new women's hospital in Chattanooga.

The women are not actually related to each other, nor are they professional models. My ability to find real people and direct them to get professional results was a key factor in many of the advertising assignments I received, because our clients often did not have the budget for professional models.

The campaign included a brochure, mailing pieces, and large prints that hung on the walls at the hospital's opening and for years afterward. The Creative Director and I both won "Addy" awards from the Chattanooga Advertising Federation for our work.

The camera was my faithful, medium-format Mamiya RB-67 with the 127mm Mamiya-Sekor lens -- my studio workhorse. The film, as always, was Fujichrome 100 in 120 size. The primary light was a studio electronic flash in a 30x40-inch softbox on my right, plus a weaker light on the gray, seamless paper background to outline their shapes. The highlights and shadows bring out the warmth and richness of their features, while a direct, straight-on flash would make everything look flat and lifeless.

The years when I had a studio in downtown Chattanooga were often hectic, but always enjoyable. I still miss my studio sometimes, but life moves on.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

The Alabama Snow Barn

Rock City Barn AL-11:  U.S. 11 in DeKalb County, five miles north of Hammondsville.

 

It's been a while since I've posted a Rock City barn picture. This one has always been one of my favorites. I think of it as "the Alabama Snow Barn."

One morning in the winter of 1995 I work up to find a beautiful, sunny day with a few inches of snow on the ground that had fallen overnight. I knew it wouldn't be long before it melted, so I hopped in my old Chevy Blazer and drove up and over Lookout Mountain to U.S. Highway 11 in the northeast corner of Alabama.

Over the years this barn has been painted with two different messages. If you click on the photo you can see a larger version that should enable you to read them both. The clearer one says "Bring Your Camera to ROCK CITY. It's a Photographer's Paradise." The other message is harder to read, but I think it says "See ROCK CITY Today." See what you think.

The camera was a Canon EOS-A2 fitted with a Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 EF lens. The film, as usual, was Fujichrome 100D slide film.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Photographing Education

 Dissecting Piglet: Science class at Tennessee Temple University

Through the years of my career in professional photography, I found one type of assignment particularly enjoyable -- photographing in schools and colleges. In Chattanooga I photographed for Tennessee Temple University, Temple Elementary School, Southern University, the McCallie School, and several schools for the Public Education Foundation. For Bryan College in Dayton, Lee in Cleveland, Memphis State, David Lipscomb in Nashville, and many others.

In each case I sought to document the life, activities and spirit of the school. As a teacher myself for four years (I tell people I'm a retired teacher), I loved  being in the classroom with the students, but didn't love lesson plans and grading papers enough to continue in that profession. As a photographer I could enjoy being with the students and faculty members while doing the work I loved most.

I was always given free rein to move about each school, looking for and photographing things I found interesting and that would present the school in the best light -- because the purpose of my picture-making was always to promote the school and its mission.

It was fun, and I miss it.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Too Tired to Write!

 Sunset over Mobile Bay, Alabama

I hope you enjoy the picture of sunset over Mobile Bay, because I don't feel like writing much this evening. I finished unloading our stuff from the storage unit in north Georgia and rearranging it all on shelf units in the garage today. I'm glad to have that job behind me. Moving is not much fun.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

 

A Moving Experience

Japanese Magnolia near the back corner of our new home, Knoxville.

 

Yesterday I drove to LaFayette, Georgia to empty our storage unit and load everything into a U-Haul truck. Now we have all our possessions at our new home, but a lot of stuff is in the garage, where it will remain while we gradually absorb it into the house. We refer to this state of things as being carried in, but not yet moved in.  (Realistically, some things will probably still be in the garage ten years from now!)

Japanese magnolias and other flowering trees have been blessing our little enclave with beauty for the last week or so. I made the picture of the one by the back corner of our home on Sunday afternoon. 

We enjoy the warm weather and the beauty, but we are worried that this bit of spring is just to early. A hard freeze could cause a black spring like the one we had in 2007, when we had two 22-degree nights in late April that turned the leaves on all the trees black.

Louise's birthday is today. 39 again!

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

The Ability to Notice

Four women of Vernazza

 

"(Photography) is about reacting to what you see, hopefully, without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply about noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy."  Elliott Erwitt

Erwitt, whom I consider to have been the best photographer of the 20th Century and who is, amazingly, still active in his 90s, also said"All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice things."

Photography, of course, has many aspects. There's commercial photography, a field in which Erwitt and I both made our livings by making photographs to a client's specifications. But while I was merely a journeyman, he was among the very elite, commanding large fees. There's also journalistic photography, architectural photography, portraiture, art photography -- Erwitt was the master of them all. But his real love was spontaneous, candid "snaps," as he called them, of life on the wing. Today, prints of his "snaps" sell for $4,000 and up and have been made into more than 20 books.

As a photographer I'm far from being anywhere near Erwitt's class. But one thing I have learned from him and would hope to impart to you is simply to notice things.

With so much photoblog space these days devoted to technique and equipment, there's little discussion of what photography is really about. Equipment can be purchased and technique can be learned, but the ability to notice things takes dedication and practice. Keep your eyes open and your camera ready.

(This post originally appeared, with a different picture, on September 10. 2021.) 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

A Sense of Wonder

 

Who in the world abandons a valuable instrument

such as a harp to molder away in a field?

 

Photograph copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2020

 

 

Reposted from July 1, 2020

 

Photography is a tool with many uses. It can be used to make portraits, report the news, photograph weddings, fashion, landscapes, architecture, and products for sale -- its uses are almost endless. Yet, photography, alone among the arts, has an unique ability that goes far beyond its utilitarian applications. It is the sense of wonder.

As distinguished from other visual media, the art of photography is primarily the art of seeing. A photograph is created at the instant of exposure, and nothing done to it afterward will make it art if it was not well seen to begin with. Throughout the history of the medium, the works that have had power, the works that have lasted, have been straight photographs. Their power and their art are in the photographer's ability to see and to present his vision in a tangible form.

 

Beauty and mystery. Where is the woman whose shadow is at the left?

What is the significance of the hanging rope? Who is the man

half-seen on the right? What is the source of that brilliant light

illuminating the wall on the right?

The essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and 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.

 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."

As photographer Fred Picker wrote in Shutterbug Magazine, "This Koudelka (print by Czech photographer Joseph Koudelka). . .contains the most amazing combination of things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging. Here are two horses, standing in a certain position, a boy sitting on a bicycle wearing an angel suit with angel wings, here's an old lady scolding him, all in magnificent light and beautifully composed. Today, that picture could be made by some guy sitting in front of a computer. Knowing that would take all the wonder out of it."

The priest grabbed the bridal bouquet

and flourished it while the couple kissed.

In actuality, it isn’t likely “some guy sitting in front of a computer” would make such a picture, because those who alter and/or combine photographs are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can conceive. But photography goes beyond human imagination. As novelist Tom Clancy has said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.”

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. The uniqueness of photography is in that sense of wonder that only photography can provide.

 "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).

The Famous Laughing Horse.

I rest my case.

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.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Posting and Reposting

 

 Starr's Mill, Senoia, Georgia

Olympus E-PL1 camera, Zuiko 14-42 f3.5-5.6 lens

(Click to enlarge)

Blog Note: As you are probably aware if you follow this blog, I 've been reposting some articles from earlier days. There are two reasons for this: the first is that I have been extremely busy moving into and getting settled in our new home, as well as getting our RV ready to sell. I am totally mystified that we can't seem to fit the contents of a 325-square-foot RV into a 1700-square-foot condo!

The second reason is that many of you have discovered this blog relatively recently and have never read the earlier posts, some of which, I tell myself, are worth reading. Or even reading again.

Once we are well-settled into our new home I will go back to my practice of posting new material (at least mostly). Thanks for your patience, and If you haven't previously read some of the repeat posts, I hope you will enjoy them. This one is from February, 2021.

 

One of the most beautiful, well-preserved, and visible of Georgia’s many old mills is Starr’s Mill on Whitewater Creek, about eight miles south of Fayetteville on GA Highway 85. It's also one of my very favorites.

The first mill at this location was built of logs by Hananiah Gilcoat sometime before 1825, but the name “Starr’s Mill” came from Hilliard Starr, who owned the property from 1866 to 1879. The present building was erected in 1907 and was in operation until 1959.

Like many Georgia mills, Starr’s Mill was powered by an underwater turbine rather than a visible waterwheel to grind corn and operate a sawmill.  There was also a cotton gin on the property, and in its later years, even a dynamo that produced electricity for the nearby town of Senoia. 

Just for fun, I photographed Starr's Mill with a Canon 5D Classic, an Olympus E-PL1, and a Yashica twin-lens reflex loaded with Fujichrome Provia film. The Olympus and the Canon both have12-megapixel sensors, although the Canon's sensor is much larger, and the Yashica, of course, is medium format. This time, at least, the Olympus won.

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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