The Ordinary Photograph

 The scarecrow behind the fire station. Hog Jowl Road, Walker County, Georgia.

No one is going to choose this photograph as a contest winner, nor is it likely to ever hang in an art museum. In fact, I've never even sold a print of it, although I did include it in one of my books. It's just an ordinary photograph of an ordinary country scene. 

But I like it. There's a certain satisfaction in the play of the early morning light across the corn leaves and the scarecrow's just-right costume. The old gate in the background encloses this little rural vignette.

Not all of our photographs have to be blockbusters. There's a place for the ordinary, the commonplace. Sometimes these little glimpses of life can be very satisfying. So when you look at a scene and think there's not much photographic possibility there, shoot it anyway. You may surprise yourself.

The photo: Probably a Canon EOS A2 with the EF 28-105mm lens, Fujichrome 100 film.

See my October 3rd post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    film photography     Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 28-105mm lens    Fujichrome 100 film     Georgia     travel photography

The Book that Changed My Life

(Adapted from a post in June, 2020.)

Actually, the book that changed my life was the Bible. But the book that changed my professional life was Rock City Barns: A Passing Era.

In 1982 I began doing advertising and public relations photography for Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1988, Bill Chapin, the president of See Rock City, Inc. told me about his long-time dream to create a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

He decided not to proceed at that time, but my interest had been kindled. I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still repainting, and whenever my travels brought me near one, I made a photograph of it if possible. In 1994, after learning that the number of barns being repainted had dwindled to 85, I made prints of some of my photos and told him I felt that if we were ever to do a book, now was the time.

He didn't say much. Just looked at the pictures for several minutes, asked a few questions, then said the magic words: "Let's do it!"

 

File Cards with Barn Locations

Cards like these were used by many businesses in pre-computer days.

 

 In a few days he sent me a box containing hundreds of old office file cards from the 1960s; Rock City's only record of most barn locations. On each card was the name of the property owner at that time, the highway, and the distance from the nearest town. Many had a small photo attached, apparently taken about 1960; but some had only rough sketches of the barns. Inside the fold-over card was a record of rents paid (usually $3 to $5 per year) and repaint dates.  Rock City had had no contact with most of these barns since the late 60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see.

So I went.

 

Sorting the cards into piles by states (15), and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994.  Over the next 18 months, stealing time from my studio whenever I could, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites.

 

When the photography was well along, I hired a designer and began writing the text. The designer found a printing agent and boom! I was in the publishing business! The agent placed our book project with a printing house in Belgium known for fine printing -- their principal business was museum catalogs.

Chapin ordered 20,000 copies for Rock City, which gave me a tidy profit on the enterprise. And this is where I made what I have come to regard as a serious mistake: instead of taking my profit and using it to finance other book projects, I reasoned that I could triple my money if I ordered 10,000 books to sell myself.

Unfortunately, I failed to consider the true costs. I had to hire additional staff to deal with taking orders and shipping; I had to rent additional office space; and I wound up spending a great deal of time over the next ten years promoting and selling the book: time that could have been used to build up my photography business and, as I said, to develop new book projects. Instead, I spent many weekends lugging my books and prints to arts and crafts shows and spent many hours traveling to book signings. 

As the old proverb says, "We grow too soon old and too late smart."

It was an interesting experience and kinda fun sometimes, but I do wish I had instead put the time into building up my business and developing new book projects.   

 

See my October 3rd Post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    photographic prints     Rock City Barns:A Passing Era    Rock City Barns pictures    Rock City Barns book     barns

Any Picture in the Book!

Rock City Barns: A Passing Era. More than 29,000 copies sold.

I'm now offering original photographic prints, suitable for framing, of any picture in the Rock City Barns book. All prints are made from the original slides and all prints will be signed by me.

This includes the pictures in the back of the book. They were printed in black and white for publishing economy, but were originally photographed in color and will be printed in color for this sale. (Unless you want a black and white print.)

Sizes and prices are:   11x14........$59.95

                                       16x20.......$99.95

                                       20x30.....$199.95

These prices include shipping. 

These are the original prices I set in 1996, when the book was published. If I were to adjust for inflation the prices would be much higher, but I want to make the pictures available to as many people as possible.

To order, tell me the page number(s) of the picture(s) you want. If there is more than one picture on a page, give me the position of the picture and the identifying caption beneath it.

You can send a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922, or you can use PayPal. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com. Please add 3% for PayPal orders.

If you don't have Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, used copies are available at Amazon.com at reasonable prices. (They even have new ones now and then, but I don't know where they get them. Probably from one of my former distributors.)

Some Rock City Barn prints are available at my pixels site at lower cost, but the selection is currently very small and they will not be signed.

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    photographic prints     Rock City Barns:A Passing Era    Rock City Barns pictures    Rock City Barns book     barns

It's October!

 

  Blue and Gold

Chickamauga Creek* near its source in McLemore Cove,Walker County, Georgia.

 

October is the best of all months.

Some may prefer April or May, and I like them too, but I love October. The summer heat has broken so the nights are cool, but the days are mostly warm and since it doesn’t usually rain much the skies are clear almost every day.

October light is the most beautiful because the air is so clear that the long, slanting rays of the southward-moving sun illuminate everything in their paths with a special brilliance while casting everything else in deep shadow. Fall color usually peaks right around the last week of October in the North Georgia mountains. Leaf colors are softer than they are farther north, but no less beautiful.

October is the month for the first frost, for arts and crafts fairs, for a briskness in the air that makes you glad to be alive, and for taking someone you love for a long walk to look at the leaves.

(Text and photograph are from my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. This little essay is one of my favorite bits of writing, which is why I republish it.)

*Chickamauga Creek flows from south to north, through the village of Chickamauga and Chickamauga Battlefield, to both of which it lends its name. The creek, in turn, takes its name from the Chickamaugas, a sub-tribe of the Cherokee.

The photo was made with my old reliable Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens and Fujichrome 100 film.

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    film photography     Pentax 6x7 camera     Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens      Chickamauga Creek     Chickamauga, Georgia    Chickamauga Battlefield    McLemore Cove    Walker County, GA     October     Seasons

I Love to Photograph Old Cars

19554-55 Pontiac. Georgia Highway 192, Stillmore, Emanuel County.

 

I first began photographing old/abandoned cars on my Sunday afternoon rambles around northwest Georgia in the late 1970s.  I think that fixation goes hand-in-hand with my interest in photographing old and abandoned buildings, which began a few years earlier. It definitely fits with a statement I wrote some years ago about my aspirations as a photographer:

I am a visual historian of mid-twentieth-century America and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of life. I'm drawn to the old, the historic, the quirky and offbeat, the strange and unusual, and the beautiful. Old houses, old cars. old churches, old courthouses, old mills, covered bridges and historic sites. 

It's something the Japanese call Wabi-Sabi -- the art of finding beauty in imperfection. That's what I do. I seek beauty in the imperfections with which life surrounds us. Because, imperfect or not, life is beautiful. As Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote in his A Child's Garden of Verses, "Life is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

1959 Edsel. U.S. Highway 89, southwestern Utah.

 

 An interesting side note: Louise's mother had an Edsel like this when we were dating and first married. Hers was blue and cream.

 

About the photos: Both of these pictures were made with my favorite combination for photographing old cars: the Fuji X-Pro-1 with the Fujinon XF 27mm f2.8 lens. The picture of the old Pontiac was made on September 29, 2021 and the Edsel was photographed on September 25, 2018.

 

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Fuji X-Pro-1 camera     Fujinon XF 27mm f2.8 lens      digital photography     old cars    Pontiac    Edsel    Wabi-Sabi

The Backroads Traveler: Two Historic Churches near Helen, Georgia

The Crescent Hill Baptist Church.

 The little mountain village of Helen, Georgia owes its life to tourism. In early 1969, some Helen businessmen were searching for a way to bolster the village's sagging lumber economy, possibly by finding a way to entice tourists to drop a few bucks in the town as they passed through on their way to the mountains. They consulted with an artist named John Kollock, who had some ideas. By fall of that same year, Helen had reinvented itself as an Alpine village, straight out of Bavaria. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

The town is bracketed by two historic churches. On the southeast is Crescent Hill Baptist Church, built in 1872. It was originally known as Nacoochee Presbyterian Church, but has been used by Baptists since 1921. The church currently has about 150 members, and services are held each Sunday at 11 a.m. The pulpit, pews, and stained glass are all original.  This is one of the prettiest country churches I've found in my travels.

 

 

On the northwest edge of the town is the Chattahoochee Methodist Church. . Founded in 1860, the present building was built 1888–90 and looks the same as it did when it was the setting for the 1951 film I'd Climb the Highest Mountain, starring Susan Hayward, William Lundigan, and Rory Calhoun.

Like the Crescent Hill church, it is still in business. A wedding was in progress on the day I made this photograph.

 This post was adapted from my book Backroads and Byway of Georgia.

About the photographs: The Crescent Hill Church was photographed on September 26, 2006 with a Canon EOS 5D (Classic) and a Canon EF 24-85mm lens. For the Chattahoochee Methodist Church, which I photographed ten years later, on October 29, 2016, I used a Canon EOS 6D and a Canon EF 28-105mm lens.

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Canon EOS 5D (Classic) camera     Canon EF 24-85mm lens      digital photography     Canon EOS 6D camera    Helen, Georgia    Canon EF 28-105mm lens     Historic churches    

Street Photography Revisited

 

 Four Women of Vernazza. Cinque Terra, Italy.

Blog Note: Although I didn't identify it as such, the photo of the pedicab and driver in my previous post was pure street photography. That started me thinking about the subject and wanting to write more, but I realized that I couldn't improve upon a post I wrote a few years ago. So here it is.

Street photography is an ever popular genre of photography. In the broadest sense, street photography is just documenting the world around you. 

In some cities, much of life is lived out in public, on the street. This is more the case in other countries, of course, but it's also still true in some cities in the U.S., especially the larger ones. This makes the streets an open-air studio for photographers sufficiently skilled to make something of the opportunity.

Browsing through photography web sites and blogs, I see a lot of what is called "street photography." And it is indeed street photography, if by that you mean someone out on the street photographing people and things in passing. However, most of the work I see has no point to it. Most so-called street photographs look as if someone had just gone into a public place and started firing his camera around at random. There's no apparent point. No apparent message. Not even anything unusual or unique to capture the eye or the imagination. Most of those voluminous photographs are simply meaningless junk. One well-known blogger posts volumes of sharp, perfectly exposed street scenes. If they have a point, maybe I'm too stupid to discern it.

I believe street photography must reveal some aspect of life, of the human condition. If it fails in this, it fails. Period.

Elliott Erwitt died nearly two years ago. I consider him to have been the greatest street photographer of all time. He created thousands of poignant, incisive photographs simply by carrying a camera with him at all times and keeping his eyes open and his mind engaged. He had a gift for this that most of us can only marvel at. He excelled at making photographs that show some aspect of human, or sometimes, as he so ably demonstrates, animal behavior. But the operative words here are "carrying a camera at all times." "Open eyes." And "an engaged mind."  

 

 Sometimes Erwitt's wit is very subtle, and sometimes it's like a slap in the face. Photograph above copyright the Estate of Elliott Erwitt.

As he said, "It's about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of 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."

Check out his web site here.

(Top photograph: Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 lens.) 

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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 also offer signed prints of any photograph in the Rock City Barns book. Contact me for details.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Canon EOS 20D camera     Canon EF 24-85mm lens      digital photography     Vernazza, Italy    Cinque Terra    Elliott Erwitt     street photography

Waiting for a Ride

 Pedicab driver, Charleston, SC, 2007.

 This young man does not appear to be especially concerned that his pedicab is empty while the horse-drawn rig across the street is packed. Maybe he's waiting for a low-budget customer who wants a tour but can't afford the horses.

That's not a cell phone in his hands. It's a pen and a small notebook. Can you imagine a time when most people were not going about glued to their phones?

I found this photo as I was looking through my files for something to post and was surprised to realize that the photo was made in 2007. Has it been that long? We used to go at least every few years, especially when our family was young. I remember spending a week in a beach cabin at Isle of Palms in the early '80s. Good times.

The photo was made with a Canon EOS 20D, a good camera for its time. The lens was Canon's basic 50mm f1.8.

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Canon EOS 20D camera     Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens      digital photography     Charleston, SC    pedicabs    Isle of Palms

More about Noticing Things

Green Doors. Marion County, Georgia.

 I've written nearly 800 posts since 2019 on this blog, and one of my most frequently recurring themes has been "noticing things." That's because I think the most important thing we do as photographers is noticing the things around us and showing them to others. As the late, great photographer Tony King said," My life has been dominated by one thing: a need to show people what I'm excited about. When I was a little boy, I was always dragging people off to show them the things that made the world wonderful to me."

That's what I've been seeking to do since I first became seriously interested in photography 57 years ago. I want to see and share the things that make life and the world interesting to me. That's my primary motivation. But since I also found the tools and processes of photography fascinating, I decided to make a career of it. That's not for everyone, of course, but everyone can open his or her eyes to the world around us and make pictures that will be enjoyable and valuable to the photographer and to others.

Our photographs do not need to be earthshaking examples of photographic art. They are not likely to be published in magazines or hung in galleries. They only need to be of things that caught our interest or attention, for whatever reason. If we like our pictures, that's sufficient. If others like them too, so much the better.

The green doors were on an abandoned store building just east of Buena Vista, in Marion County, Georgia. I made it while traveling the circumference of the state making pictures for my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. The camera was a Canon EOS 5D and the lens was the always-handy Canon EF 24-85mm f3.5-4.5.

Nothing spectacular. Just something I noticed.

If you like my pictures, 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Canon EOS 5D camera     Canon EF 24-85mm lens      digital photography     "Magic Drainpipe"    Buena Vista, Georgia    Marion County, Georgia     B.A. "Tony" King     abandoned buildings

Commuting with Open Eyes (and Ready Camera)

 Tractor in Barn.

For most of the 33 years Louise and I lived on our little farm in Northwest Georgia's McLemore Cove, one or both of us worked in Chattanooga. It was 25 miles to my downtown studio, and about 30 miles for Louise when she worked at the mental health facility. Most people would consider that a long commute, but I always enjoyed it. Louise, maybe not quite as much, but she loved living where we lived.

I made the trip six days a week, most weeks, for thirteen years. After closing my studio in 2000, I still had clients in Chattanooga, so I made the trip frequently, but not everyday.

It was enjoyable for me because there were interesting things to see and photograph in all seasons of the year. As I drove north, Lookout Mountain was on my left. As I drove south toward home, I could watch the sun set in the west over the mountain. I made many of my favorite photos on this commute.

These three photographs were made along Georgia Highway 193 in Walker County. The barn with a tractor peeking out (probably a classic Ford 8N) was in the little community of High Point, about halfway to Chattanooga. The Demented (Crazy) Spider was in that stretch of highway also. Clearing Storm over Lookout Mountain was made just south of Flintstone. It is one of my top five all-time favorite photos:

Crazy Spider,

Clearing storm over Lookout Mountain.

All these photographs were made on Fujichrome 100 film. For the Tractor in Barn and Clearing Storm I used a Canon EOS A2, as best I remember. I do remember that I used the great Canon EF 80-200 f2.8L lens (often called "the Magic Drainpipe") for Clearing Storm. My best guess is that I photographed the Crazy Spider with an Olympus OM2n, but I don't remember the 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography    travel photography     barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 80-2000 f2.8L lens      Fujichrome 100D film    film photography     "Magic Drainpipe"    north Georgia     Walker County, Georgia     Olympus OM2n camera     Ford 8N tractor

Revisiting Bryce Canyon

 

Formations in Bryce Canyon National Park, as seen from Sunset Point.

A repost from our memorable trip west in 2018.

Just seven years ago, in September, 2018, we hooked our old Chevy pickup to our little travel trailer and headed west, traveling more than 7,000 miles and visiting many sites during our month on the road. One of our must-see sites was Bryce Canyon National Park. 

Nothing much can be said that hasn’t already been said countless times about the remarkable rock formations in the park; likewise countless photographs have been made that are more or less identical. Mine are by no means exceptional, but I enjoyed making them anyway. 

The rock formations, by the way, are called hoodoos, like those in the Valley of the Goblins. (See them here.) They have been created by erosion over many years.  Ice freezing and expanding in the cracks of the rocks is largely responsible for their distinctive shapes. 

We were fortunate to arrive when we did, as the morning sun provided a three-quarters backlight that brought out the shapes of the hoodoos in sharp relief.

 

As I said, these photos are by no means exceptional, but I enjoyed making them. They are all from out-of-the-camera jpegs, made with Fuji X-T1 and X-T20 cameras, Fujinon XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 and XC 50-230mm f4.8-6.3 lenses. 

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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     X-T1 camera     Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens       Fuji X-T20 camera     Fujinon XC 50-230mm lens    Bryce Canyon National Park     camping trailers     hoodoos

The Backroads Traveler: Two Marion County, Georgia Courthouses

The Old Marion County Courthouse.

In 2016, as I was traveling and researching for my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia, I photographed courthouses wherever I found them. Two of them were in south central Georgia's Marion County.

In the tiny, crossroads village of Tazewell, I photographed the vernacular, wood-framed Marion County Courthouse erected there in 1848 to replace one that had burned in 1845. It's known as the "old" courthouse to distinguish it from the one built in Buena Vista just two years later. It is one of only two antebellum wooden courthouses remaining in Georgia, according to Wikipedia. 

Just one court session was held there before the voters decided to move the county seat to Buena Vista. For many years since, the building has housed a Masonic Lodge. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is the only surviving courthouse in a town that is not the current county seat.

The "new"Marion County Courthouse in Buena Vista.

The  present Marion County Courthouse was built in 1850 of locally-made brick. The architectural style has been described as vernacular, with Neoclassical alterations, which consist mostly of the columns which were added to the front in 1928. The building, which sits in the town square at Buena Vista, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Even at its age it is a very attractive building.

Flag and eagle. Marion County Courthouse, Buena Vista.

The top two photos were made in 2016 for my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia. The above picture of the flag and courthouse arch in Buena Vista was made in 2010 as I traveled around the state to make pictures for my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. 

Text adapted from my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

About the photographs: the top two photos were made on September 28, 2016. The camera for both was the Canon EOS 6D with the Canon EF 28-105mm lens. The bottom photo was made on May 10, 2010, using a Canon 5D "Classic" and a Canon EOS 70-200mm f4L 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Canon EOS 6D camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens       Canon EOS 5D "Classic" camera     Canon EF 70-200mmL lens    Marion County, Georgia     Georgia courthouses     Buena Vista, Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Georgia's Grand Canyon

 Providence Canyon, Stewart County. One of Georgia's seven natural wonders.

Providence Canyon, Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” ranked as one of the state’s Seven Natural Wonders, is actually the result of poor farming practices and unchecked erosion. It simply has to be seen to be believed. Perhaps even more difficult to believe is that in 1859 the canyon was only a shallow gully.

There are several overlooks from which to view the canyon, most of which require some walking. One of the best, though, requires relatively little walking and is one of the first you come to, just beyond the restrooms. The state parks people, who should know, say the canyon is 150 feet deep. But it looks much deeper.

In addition to viewing the canyon, which is certainly worth the trip, the 1003-acre state park also offers picnic shelters, pioneer campsites, back-country campsites, 3 miles of hiking trails, and a 7-mile back-country backpacking trail. It’s open daily 7 a.m.–6 p.m. September 15–April 14, and 7 a.m.–9 p.m. April 15–September 14. As with most Georgia state parks, there’s no admission fee but a $5 parking pass is required. It's located west of Lumpkin in southwest Georgia's Stewart County.

Note the two front entrances at Providence Methodist Church.

When Providence Methodist Church was organized, around 1832, the congregation met in a log building on a site that is now between two of the canyons. The present building was erected in 1859, fortunately on a different site. At the time the church was built, the canyon was nothing more than a gully about five feet deep!

The church is not locked. You can go inside, but be respectful.   Laid out in the old style, there are separate entrances and seating for men and women. The pulpit area, pump organ, and pot-bellied stove are all as they were left by the last congregation.

Unfortunately, the state, which owns the land, has not done a good job of upkeep on the cemetery, where many Stewart County pioneer families are buried.

Adapted from my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

About the photographs: Both were made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera and the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 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 $4.95 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.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm lens       Georgia's Natural Wonders     Historic churches     Stewart County, Georgia     Georgia State Parks