Monday, March 24, 2025

Where Has Life Gone?

Louise and David playing Scrabble. Miami, 1969/70.

Where, indeed has life gone? When I made this photo Louise was about 24; I was in my early 30s. We had been married for four years. How little we could have guessed what the future would hold. Now Louise has just turned 80, I'll be 88 in May, and in August we will have been married for 60 years. It has all gone by so quickly. What a journey it has been! Our lives have been difficult sometimes, but always intensely interesting.

We have been blessed with a mutual love of travel. My work as a documentary photographer has taken me to 28 countries on four continents and around much of the United States. Louise accompanied me to 14 of those countries. She has been to five countries on her own, some of them on medical missions. Our personal travels have taken us to another six countries, plus Hawaii and Alaska.

Louise has been plagued by back problems and has had several surgeries, but she had a great 37-year career as a nurse and Nurse Practitioner and always been good to go and ready for 'most anything.

Our children were grown and gone from home by the time I was 50 and Louise in her early 40s. She had always wanted to live on a farm, and she said that now was the time! So we found 30 acres in northwest Georgia's beautiful and remote McLemore Cove and began our life there in a 12 by 40-foot, second-hand, mobile home. Over the next 33 years we raised beef cattle, built a barn, then a home, which was always lively with our growing family of grandchildren at holidays.

After selling the farm, we lived in a fifth-wheel trailer for two years, traveling to eight states. We miss life in our trailer.

Now, advancing age has us in a nice townhome community, where life is pleasant, but uneventful. We greatly miss the lives we have lived, the travel, and our farm.

And that's where life has gone. God has been good to us.

The photo was made with a Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex and a flash, mounted on a tripod and fired by the self-timer.

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 film photography Yashica 124 camera life travel McLemore Cove

Thursday, March 20, 2025

The Backroads Traveler: Madison, Georgia

Heritage Hall is the headquarters of the Morgan County Historical Society. A sophisticated example of Greek Revival architecture built in 1811 by Dr. Elijah Jones, it is authentically decorated and open for tours.

Madison was one of the few towns in east central Georgia that was not destroyed by General Sherman in his 1864 "March to the Sea" that broke the back of the Confederacy. It was spared because it was the home of pro-Union Georgia Senator Joshua Hill. Because of that act of mercy, Madison contains one of the largest collections of antebellum structures in the South.

The Morgan County Courthouse was built in 1905 in the Beaux Arts style and sits in an unusual location just off one corner of the town square.

Madison has been called "one of the ten most beautiful towns in the Southern states" by The Culture Trip, and even "one of the sixteen most beautiful towns in the world" by Budget Travel Magazine. Travel Holiday Magazine named it the "#1 small town in America." Those praises are nothing new. Madison was described more than 170 years ago in the 1845 Guide to Georgia as the "most cultured and aristocratic town on the stagecoach route from Charlestown to New Orleans."

So with those accolades to whet your appetite, pick up a self-guided tour brochure at the Historic Madison Welcome Center on the town square and go for a walkabout.

Although Madison's population is only about 4,500, the town seems larger. Incorporated in 1809 and named after President James Madison, the historic district is one of the largest in Georgia, with nearly a hundred antebellum (pre-Civil War) homes. As you might image, tourism is the city's main industry.

However, Madison is small enough to be an easy place to navigate on foot, and with enough interesting things to see to make it worth your while. Here are some buildings I liked.

The Rogers House was built on one of the original town lots.

Just down the street from the courthouse is the Plantation Plain-style Rogers House, at 179 East Jefferson. Built around 1810, it is one of the oldest houses in Madison. It is open daily for tours. Next door is Rose Cottage, the home of former slave Adeline Rose.

The First Baptist Church was erected in 1858, using bricks made by slaves on the plantation of John Byrne Walker. It looks surprisingly modern, even today.

Just down the block is the Presbyterian Church, built in 1842. The design is Old English, with Tiffany stained glass windows. In 1866, Ellen Axson, the pastor's daughter, married Woodrow Wilson, who would later become the 28th president of the United States.

The Episcopal Church of the Advent was built by Methodists.

The Gothic Revival Church of the Advent at 338 Academy Street was built circa 1842 by a Methodist congregation, but was sold to the Episcopalians in 1960. The original slave gallery has been converted to an organ loft.

The Stagecoach House is a residence these days.

The Stagecoach House, at 549 Old Post Road, was built circa 1810, at about the same time as the Rogers House. It was an inn and stagecoach stop when the Old Post Road was part of the route between Charleston and New Orleans.

About the photos: All photos in this post were made with a Canon 6D digital camera and the Canon 28-105mm EF lens or the EF 17-35mm f2.8L.

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

Blog Note: Posting has been a bit erratic this week. Sorry. Sometimes, as I say, life does get in the way.

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 6D digital camera Canon 28-105mm EF lens Canon EF 17-35mm f2.8L lens travel photography Madison, Georgia antebellum buildings in Georgia Sherman's march to the sea historic Madison, Georgia

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

The Backroads Traveler: A Day Among the Azeleas

Azaleas at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia.

One spring day in the late '90s, Louise and I journeyed to the little west Georgia town of Pine Mountain, where we toured the world-famous Callaway Gardens. Featuring North America's largest azalea garden, with more than 20,000 native and exotic species lining the winding trails and reflecting their beauty in the Mirror Pond and Valley Stream, it is a spring spectacle that must be seen to be believed.

Azaleas and their reflections at Callaway Gardens.

With 13,000 acres, Callaway Gardens is so many things that it's almost impossible to summarize it in a few paragraphs. It's a resort with lakes, beaches, boating and fishing, water sports, championship golf courses, tennis courts, eight walking trails, and bicycle trails. There are nine restaurants, nine shops, an inn, cottages, and villas. It is also an event venue and a conference center, and has one of the country's largest butterfly conservatories.

From mid-November to New Year's, visitors can drive a five-mile trail of illuminated scenery, or ride a trolley if you prefer, in Callaway Gardens' Festival of Lights, made up of eight million lights on 725 miles of light string.

Me and my trusty Pentax 6x7 camera. A real workhorse.

Accompanied by Louise (there should be a special medal for photographer's wives) I spent an entire day walking the trails and photographing the azaleas.

Looking at this photo (taken by Louise) makes me nostalgic for the days when I had hair.

My Pentax was mounted on a heavy-duty tripod and loaded with Agfa color transparency (slide) film. The Pentax was a great camera for me. Its 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens was very sharp, and to this day I believe it gave me a higher percentage of "keepers" than any other film camera I've owned. I might still be shooting one if I could afford the film and processing. (And could deal with the weight. They are heavy.)

The Pentax made ten exposures on a roll of #120 film, each transparency 6x7 centimeters in size. That's about four times the size of a 35mm slide. I don't remember how many rolls of film I shot that day, but it was quite a few. It was a great trip and a memorable experience.

Blog Note: This post is a day late. Sometimes life gets in the way.

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

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

Tags: photography film photography travel photography west Georgia Pentax 6x7 camera Pentax Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens Agfa film 120 film transparency film Callaway Gardens Pine Mountain, Georgia azaleas flower photography

Friday, March 14, 2025

Reflections on Abandoned Houses

Abandoned House, Armuchee Valley, Georgia

Blog Note: I'm kinda busy this week. I bought Louise a three-wheel bike for her birthday. It arrived Monday. Unfortunately, it came in a big box with the three most frightening words in the English language: "Some Assembly Required," which turned out to be All Assembly required! I have it mostly put together, but I'm still trying to figure out the derailleur (gear shifter). So I'm reposting a piece I especially like from 2022.

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Exploring northwest Georgia's Amurchee Valley some years ago in an area where Walker County and Chatooga Counties join, I found a house sitting empty, doors unlocked, furniture still in place, even tools still hanging on the shed wall. Some old couple had passed away, probably, or one or both had gone to a nursing home, leaving no family or anyone who cared about the property. I've found this to be unfortunately common in rural America.

A recurring theme in my photographic work is abandonment. As my artist's statement on the left side of this blog says, "My domain is the old, the odd, and the ordinary; the beautiful, the abandoned, and the about to vanish away."

So often in my ramblings around the countryside I find things that once were full of life but now lie abandoned and desolate. Old houses, old cars, old churches, old barns, old mills: for no reason I've ever been able to understand, I'm drawn to them.

The Frank Inman house, Martin Co., IN after Frank died and the family left.

In a way, these photographs are about life. Or more accurately, the brevity of it. Have you ever noticed that a house, no matter how ramshackle, seems to hold together as long as someone lives in it? And how quickly even a fairly substantial house can go down when it's empty? When we moved into McLemore Cove, there was an empty house just off Cove Road that had been recently occupied and appeared reasonably sound. Within a relatively few years of emptiness it had collapsed and rotted away, leaving only a weed-covered foundation.

Not to be morbid, but life is short. I can tell you from personal experience that even a long life is short. A good reminder to, as the Bible says, "set our minds on things above."

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 brevity of life abandonment northwest Georgia Indiana Martin County, IN old houses

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Why I Prefer Zoom Lenses. Some History.

Hang Gliding. Lookout Mountain, GA. Vivitar Series One zoom.

This is pretty much a dead issue these days, but when I began in serious photography in 1969, zoom lenses did not have a good reputation. They were slow, and not very sharp. I did not have a zoom lens for my Nikon cameras, and when I dumped the Nikons and bought into the Olympus OM system, I bought a complete set of prime lenses ranging from 21mm to 135mm, but only one zoom, a 36-70, which was handy, but not especially good.

My first good zoom was a Vivitar Series One 70-210mm f3.5, which I used on my Olympus cameras to photograph the World Cup International Hang Gliding competition on Lookout Mountain for Glider Rider magazine in the early '80s.

A man of Mayalan, Guatemala. Early morning. 80-200mm Vivitar zoom.

Time passed, and zoom lenses continued to improve. In 1989 I used another Vivitar, an 80-200 f4, extensively in my documentation of the remote mountain village of Mayalan in Guatemala.

I later had a Tokina 100-300 mm f4, which I used in my documentations of several African countries and in Eastern Europe in 1990. It was a very fine lens, but large and heavy. When I went to India and other Asian countries in 1992, I took only four prime lenses -- 24, 35, 85, and 180.

In 1993, when I moved from Olympus to Canon, I began to use zoom lenses most of the time. A particular favorite was the 80-200mm f2.8L, known as "The Magic Drainpipe." A great lens, but when it developed a mechanical problem, I switched to the light and very sharp 70-200 f4L. For mid-range zooms, I mostly carried the Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 or the EF 28-105 f3.5-4.5, a lens not highly rated by some, but which was used for at least half the pictures in my Rock City Barns book. No one ever said the pictures were not sharp enough.

As the couple kissed, the priest grabbed the bouquet and waved it around.

This is my all-time favorite wedding photo. It was made in a cathedral in Atlanta, using the Canon EF 70-200mm f4L zoom lens on my old Canon EOS 5D Classic camera.

When I switched to Fuji in 2017 I tried several different combinations of lenses before settling on a kit of two primes and three zooms. The 27mm mostly stays glued to my X-Pro1 for casual walking-around photography, and the other prime is a 60mm f2.4 macro, which is a special lens for close-up work. The 16-80mm f4 is the lens that stays on my X-T3. and my telephoto zoom is the 55-200mm f3.5-4.5. A 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 stays on my X-T20 as a backup or when I don't want to carry anything heavier.

Zooms nowadays are plenty sharp, at least for the kind of photography I do, and it's much easier to carry a pair of zooms than a selection of prime lenses in various focal lengths. Also, I find the ability to zoom very important in framing each photo exactly as I want it. I could always change perspective by moving closer or backing away (what some call zooming with the feet), but I often find that only a zoom will give me the exact perspective I want.

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 Nikon cameras Canon EOS 5D Classic camera Canon EF 70-200mm f4Llens Fuji X-T3 camera Vivitar Series One lens Olympus OM film cameras Fujinon XF 60mm macro lens Fuji X-T20 digital camera Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens Fujinon XF 60mm macro lens Fujinon 27mm lens hang gliding Guatemala wedding photography travel photography Canon EF 28-105mm lens

Monday, March 10, 2025

Louise says "Thanks!"

Louise and Bridget, around 1990.

Louise asked me to convey her thanks to all of you who posted kind words, "Happy Birthdays" and good wishes on my blog about her 80th birthday.

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.

Cameras Get Better; Pictures Don't

The sacrifice before the alter. Syracuse, New York, 1974.

Blog Note: This is a piece I wrote in January, 2020 and am now re-posting with different photos. These photographs were made while on a project in Syracuse at a time when I was going through some personal and spiritual struggles. _____________________________________

As the great photographer Ernst Haas is reputed to have said to Bob Schwalberg (European editor of the now defunct Popular Photography magazine) when Schwalberg was enthusing over the latest equipment developments, "Ach, Schwapselberg, why is it that cameras keep getting better but pictures don't get any better?"

Pictures indeed have not gotten any better, but we are in the closing stages of a great sea change in photography.

Photography is essentially a product of the modernist era and was perfectly suited to expressing the ideals of that philosophy, which implicitly included optimistic humanism. Photographically, this reached its zenith in Edward Steichen's great "Family of Man" exhibit and book. The influence of optimistic humanism continued strong in photography for many years, although we gradually forgot why.

Now we are well into the postmodern era, and support for optimistic humanism has greatly eroded. There has been a crashing loss of faith in man. Who today would say with Hamlet "What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals?"

Instead of being seen as an heroic figure with unlimited potential for progress (the twin-lens reflex camera, by the way, was the perfect instrument for expressing this heroism because the viewpoint was usually one of looking up at the subject), man is now seen in a negative way as a threat to the environment and a creature for which we can have, at best, only tentative hopes. Man has been deconstructed, and this is the reason nature, landscape, and environmental photography, although they have always been with us, have now come to the fore. The idea that "the proper study of man is man" has been largely abandoned, and where it continues, it is often the study of people living in primitive cultures, as in much of Chris Ranier's excellent work; people who are living closer to and presumably in greater harmony with the environment. This also accounts for the recent spate of books about "Native Americans."

The great humanist photographers Robert Doisneau, Elliott Erwitt and Fritz Henle are dead, as is Henri Cartier-Bresson who exited this life dabbling in water-colors. B.A. King, least-known but one of the greatest humanistic photographers, spent the last 20 or so years of his life using his camera to advocate environmental concerns. These men and many others were part of a movement that produced much of our greatest photography, but is on its last legs. As a Christian, I consider modernism and optimistic humanism to be flawed philosophies, but they nonetheless created a climate in which great photography was produced.

The watcher on the wall. Syracuse, New York, 1974.

Photography is about reality, but the influence of postmodernism has caused many to loose their hold on the concept of reality. This is reflected in the trend to computer alteration of photographs, which loosens the connection between photography and reality and threatens to break that connection altogether. From that moment, photography, as photography, will be dead. It may continue to be a nice hobby, a more-or-less profitable commercial activity, and a pretty plaything, but its power to inspire a sense of wonder will be gone. A virtual reality is no substitute for the real thing.

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The photos were made with a Konica Autoreflex T and Kodak Tri-X 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 film photography Konica Autoreflex T camera Kodak Tri-X film Syracuse, New York humanistic photography Edward Steichen Family of Man exhibit and book Henri Cartier-Bresson Elliott Erwitt

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