More Found On Road Dead

All played out. Sequatchie County, Tennessee.

A frequently recurring theme in my photography is abandonment. As I say in my artist's statement, "My domain is the old, the odd, and the ordinary; the beautiful, the abandoned, and the about to vanish away."

This scene of abandonment was found in southeast Tennessee's Sequatchee Valley.

I don't know why the old and the abandoned fascinate me, but they do. Always have. When I was a boy there were a few abandoned houses in my country neighborhood, and I liked to explore them and see the left-behind remnants of people's lives. Maybe I should get myself psychoanalyzed. But no. I would rather just take pictures. Whatever. The old and abandoned do often make good photography subjects.

"Not goin' anywhere." Burns City, Martin County, Indiana.

This abandoned early '50s Ford truck was found behind an abandoned building in the abandoned village of Burns City on the Crane Naval Ammunition Depot in Martin County, Indiana. It appears to have been there for quite a long time.

In a way, these photographs of the old and abandoned are about life. Or more accurately, the brevity of it. 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."

The equipment:  The Volkswagen was photographed with a little Olympus E-PL1, my first mirrorless digital camera. The lens was the Zuiko 14-42mm kit lens. For the truck, I used a Mamiya 6, a really neat interchangeable-lens camera that made a 2-1/4 inch square negative on 120 film, in this case Fuji color negative. I have always regretted selling that camera.

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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   digital photography   film photography    Olympus E-PL1 camera     Zuiko 14-42mm mm lens      Mamiya 6 camera     Martin County, Indiana     Sequatchee County, Tennessee     Fuji color negative fillm    old cars and trucks

The Deceptive "Easy-ness" of Digital Photography

 Lunch customers at Magoo's bar/restaurant, Chattanooga.

 

Taking a phone order at Magoo's. Both photos with Canon EOS 10D.

 

By the beginning of 2003 it was becoming apparent to me that I was going to have to reconsider my devotion to film photography -- a medium I had practiced for 35 years and in which I had developed (if you will excuse the expression) a considerable skill set.

An art photographer friend who had for years been producing beautiful darkroom prints from medium format film negatives showed me some prints he had made from a small Minolta digital camera. I couldn't see any difference from his film prints.

At the Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in February, 2003, I talked to friend Bill Bangham, who was at that time editor of the Southern Baptist World Mission Board's award-winning magazine The Commission. He advised me to go digital.

So I did. Reluctantly, but I did it. I bite the bullet and sold some of my equipment and bought a spanking-new Canon EOS 10D. For $3,000. The most I had ever paid for a camera, and still to this day the most I've ever paid.

Among the first photos I made with my 10D were the two above, at Magoo's, a bar/restaurant in the East Ridge section of Chattanooga where I ate often because the food was good (and cheap). No one noticed me as I sat at the counter, set the camera's ISO to 1600, and quietly fired off several exposures, just to see what they would look like. I was blown away by what I saw on my screen. 

I know these shots are not very good, but at the time they were a revelation. If I had been using film I would have had to use an ISO 800-speed color negative film and pushed it one stop to ISO 1600. And the results would have been no better.

These shots were jpegs, just as they came out of the camera, because at that time I knew nothing about shooting in RAW to correct color and exposure. But what amazed me was how easy it was.

"Easy" is digital photography's best feature. And it's worst. It's easy to get a sharp, well-exposed picture with today's digital cameras. And that can be deceptive. Sharpness and proper exposure do not a good photograph make. We all make the occasional lucky shot, but whether we're shooting film or digital, consistently getting good photographs takes skill and work. It's seldom easy. (And the harder I work at it, the luckier I get.)

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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   digital photography   Canon EOS 10D camera

The Art of Photography

 Early Snow. Sourwood Lane, McLemore Cove, Walker County, Georgia.

 Blog Note: We should be on our way home as you read this post, which was adapted and expanded from a post in December, 2020.

On November 19th 2020, friend and fellow photo-blogger Dennis Mook wrote about wabi-sabi, a Japanese term that means the appreciation of "beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete." But when he looks at today's landscape photography, he no longer sees a representation of nature or nature's imperfections: he sees photographs that are dramatic, over-edited, and over-saturated; hyper-real and hyper-perfect. 

Dennis blogs at thewanderinglensman.com. You should read his blog.

On November 27th, 2020, he posted a photograph that was so quietly beautiful that I was compelled to write in his comments section "This photograph is quietly, modestly, perfectly beautiful. I would hang it on my wall anytime. It is a perfect counterpoint to the "spectacular," overprocessed photographs you wrote about on Nov. 19. . . it will have far more "staying power" on your wall than a so-called "spectacular" landscape. It will give the eye delight and rest every time you walk into the room."

From my very earliest days in photography my aim has been to capture a moment of stillness in each photograph. My name for my portfolio of "art" photographs is "Images of Tranquility." My photographs are mostly quiet, and I hope, quietly beautiful. I don't do spectacular. I just see what I see and try to show it.

 

 Ricky's Trees. Daugherty Gap Road, McLemore Cove, Walker County, GA

My post-processing is pretty simple: I have an old (rent free) version of Photoshop -- CS2 -- that does most of what I want to do. Just an exposure adjustment in Curves, if needed, and light burning and dodging with the Brush tool, plus a simple adjustment in Unsharp Masking that enhances mid-tone contrast without affecting highlights or shadows, and I'm done. I don't believe in torturing my files to make them "art," because the art of photography is in the seeing. I know that digital photography allows for a great deal of manipulation, but I want my photographs to look like the scenes as I saw them, not hyped-up renditions that never existed in reality. I believe that nothing I can do after the exposure can make it art if it wasn't well seen to begin with. 

As I said in my previous post, artistic quality does not come out of a camera, it goes into the camera. Or, as the great Steichen put it, "When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration."

 Rooted in the Past. S. Dicks Creek Road, Armuchee Valley, Walker County, GA

I realize this will not make me popular with some photographers, and maybe not with the art-photo buying public. So be it. I am thankfully, too old to care.

About the equipment: These are all digital photos. Early Snow was made with a Canon EOS 20D and the EF 24-85mm lens. For Ricky's Trees, I used a Canon EOS 5D Classic with the EF 70-200L lens. Rooted in the Past was photographed with an Olympus E-M5 and a Panasonic 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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   digital photography   Georgia     Canon EOS 20D camera     Canon EF 24-85mm lens      Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm lens     Olympus E-M5 camera     Walker County, GA     Canon EOS 5D Classic camera     Canon EF 70-200Llens

Is it Art?

 

 Rob, Louise, and baby Donny, 1968

Is it art? Probably not, but it's my all-time favorite

photograph. Taken with an old Polaroid roll-film camera.

 

(Blog Note: Still in Orlando, winding up my sister-in-law's estate. This is a re-post from December, 2020.)

Bob F. commented that "We have plenty of technical image quality but most of us don't achieve much artistic quality." 

I don't think the march of photographic technology has done much to advance the art of photography. In fact, I think most photographers are looking in the wrong place. Artistic quality does not come out of a camera, it goes into a camera. Buying a better camera will not make me an artist. Or even a better photographer.

"Photography is not art; it is photography." So said Edward Steichen, one of the seminal photographers in the history of the medium. (At least I think it was Steichen. I remember the quote, but can't find it.)

I agree with his statement, yet it cannot be denied that some photographs are art and some photographers are artists.

What about me? Are my photographs art? Are yours?

Well, a few of them may be, just possibly. So does that make me an artist? Or you? No, that just makes us lucky. To be considered an artist we would need to produce a reasonable quantity of photographs that rise to the status of art, and do so over a reasonable period of time. Preferably a lifetime. That's the standard by which we accord people like Andre Kertesz and Walker Evans the title of artists. 

It also helps if you're dead. Because the final test of whether one's work is truly art is whether it endures. The composer Salieri was considered an artist in his day, yet history buried him, and although I have a good education in classical music I had never heard of him until he was exhumed for the movie Amadeus. Mozart, the hero of that movie, died in his mid-thirties yet lives on in his music; still considered some of the greatest ever composed.

For some of us this probably doesn't matter. We're happy just making snapshots of our families and the things that interest us. And the funny thing is that history may consider some of those snaps art, while much of the work of the so-called "art photographers" will likely be buried. Just like Salieri's music. 

So what can we do, assuming this matters to us?

My own approach is to always seek to work in an artistic manner, with artistic intent. Will it ultimately matter? Probably not, but this is what gives me the most satisfaction. 

And history will be the judge. Not that I'll be around to reap the kudos. (And history will not ask what camera I used.) 

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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   Polaroid cameras    art photography     family photography

Photographing Education

In the library. Cleveland, Tennessee. 

One of the things I especially enjoyed during my years as a working photographer was photographing education. It was my privilege to have had many such assignments.

Most photographers who worked in classrooms used only available light. They could get away with that when shooting with black and white film because the speed of black and white makes it possible to shoot when the light level are quite low. Some beautiful photographs have been created in that way. In fact, some photographers almost made a religion of available light.

But I didn't do it that way.

Elementary students learning computers at a private school in Huntsville, AL.

The McCallie School, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I worked with color transparency (slide) film with an exposure index of only 64 or 100, as compared to speeds of 400 to 1200 possible for B&W photographers. So I had to bring my own light. In other words, I used flash.

No, not a flash on the camera. That gives the worst kind of light (IMO). I used one or two small studio-type flash units on light stands, usually placed at a 45-degree angle to the subject. Study these pictures and you'll see what I mean.

"But," you ask, "wasn't that disrupting?"

Actually, no. I photographed frequently in classroom and worship situations where the people were fully aware of my presence. What's more, against all the advice I've heard or read, I often did it with multiple flash. Whenever possible, I had the person in charge introduce me and explain why I was there. Then I asked the people to continue with whatever they were doing as if I were not there. I worked slowly at first, while they checked me out with sidelong glances; but they become used to my presence much more quickly than you would imagine and were once again fully involved in their activities, yet with an awareness which produced a kind of hyper-intensity and concentration. I almost always got pictures with heightened emotional and dramatic impact in such situations.

Tennessee Temple University professor, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Tennessee Temple University student, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

All the above photos were made with Olympus OM series film cameras and various lenses. Films used were Fujichrome 100 and Kodachrome 64, but I couldn't tell you at this point which was which. I did cheat a bit though. The photo at the top is available-light color; probably Ektachrome 200. 

Films were scanned with a Konica-Minolta DiMage 5400 scanner.

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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   photography of education   film photography     Olympus OM film cameras     Fujichrome 100D film     Kodachrome 64 film    Ektachrome 200 film     Minolta-Dimage 5400 film scanner

A Mill That Is, and One That Was

James Rice Mill, Norris State Park, Tennessee.

(Blog Note: We are still in Orlando, dealing with attorneys, funeral homes, etc. to close out Louise's sister's estate. Doesn't look like we'll get back to Knoxville before late next week.)

The mill at Norris State Park was built in 1798 by James Rice and sons on Lost Creek in Union County, Tennessee and moved to its present location on Lower Clear Creek and restored when Norris Dam was built. It has recently been repaired and further restored.

I first photographed this mill in June, 2022, but thought it should be photographed in fall color, which I did on October 29th of this year. It was well worth the wait.

The mill that was: The waterwheel at the Olde Mill Inn, Cumberland Gap.

For more than a hundred years the Chief Black Fox Mill was operated by the families of Cherokee chief Black Fox and Daniel Boone's brother. The  wheel was built by the Fitz Water Wheel Company in Hanover, Pennsylvania in the early 1900s and the millstones were imported from England. In 1940 the wheel and millworks were moved to the building which is now the Olde Mill Inn in the village of Cumberland Gap.

No longer powering a working mill, the old wheel remains a beautiful piece of history.

Both photos were made with a Fuji X-T20 digital camera and the Fujicron XF 16-80mm 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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   digital photography   travel photography    Fuji X-T20 camera     Fujicron XF16-80 lens    old mills    Cumberland Gap     James Rice Mill     Norris, Tennessee State Park     Olde Mill Inn   Cumberland Gap

Memories, Memories. . .

 Rock City Barn RCB-KY-45. U.S. 25 in Grant County, Kentucky.

(Blog note: Sorry to have disappeared for the last few days. Louise's sister, her only living close relative, passed away last week at age 95. We are in Orlando to settle her affairs, which has been a slow process so far. We may be here for a while. I will post the blog when I can, but it may be sporadic.)

The U.S. Highway 25E tunnel near Cumberland Gap.

At my age, I have a lot of memories, and most of them are pretty clear. However, once in a while a few memories seem to run together. That was the case when I visited the Cumberland Gap area in October. I distinctly remembered having driven through the U.S. Highway 25E tunnel many years ago, and I also remembered having driven on Old 25E through the Gap and down through the village in 1995 when I was working on the Rock City Barns book. The two trips ran together in my memory. It was deja vu all over again until I realized they had to be separate trips, because the tunnel was not opened until '96.

Mulling it over, I decided that my first passage through the tunnel must have in 1997. I had been to northeastern Kentucky and southern Ohio, looking for"lost" (unlisted) Rock City barns and also photographing Mail Pouch Tobacco barns as I found them along the way. I came south via U.S. 25E because I had not previously explored much of that route. The only unlisted barn I found was the one shown at the top of this post, hiding behind trees in Grant County, Kentucky. The trip was interesting, though not very productive. But I was very impressed with my first drive through the tunnel. And I think I have my memories sorted out. (At least for now!)

The barn was photographed with a Canon EOS A2 camera with (probably) a Canon EF 28-105mm lens and Fujichrome 100 film. For the tunnel, I used a Fuji X-T20 digital camera and the Fujicron XF 16-80mm 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.

Photography and text copyright 2024 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   digital photography   travel photography    Canon EOS A2 camera     Fuji X-T20 camera     Fujinon XF16-80 lens    Rock City barns    Cumberland Gap     U.S. 25E tunnel     Fujichrome 100 film     film photography