Saturday, May 29, 2021

A Home Away from Home

Florida Sunset

This blog should have been posted Friday, but it's late because we are in Florida establishing residency. However, that doesn't mean we plan to live here.

That calls for an explanation:

Since we live full-time in our RV and may be anywhere at any given time, we need a mailing address in order to receive mail. Also, because of various legal issues, we need a fixed residential address. Theoretically, setting up residency. or domicile, can be done in just about any state, but most states make it difficult. To keep Georgia as our legal domicile, for example, we would have to spend 180 days in the state each year. Much as we love Georgia (we've lived in the state for 46 years), we want to travel more than that.

Fortunately, some states are much less restrictive in their residency requirements. Florida, Texas, and South Dakota are the most favorable to full-time RVers.

There is a number of organizations that can provide full-time RVers both legal addresses and mail-forwarding addresses. We chose the Escapees RV Club, based in Sumter County, Florida and Livingston, Texas. With the information they provided, we filled out a Declaration of Domicile form and came to Bushnell, Florida, the county seat of Sumter County, where we got new driver's licenses, Florida plates for our truck and trailer, and registered as Florida voters. (The people in the County Clerk's office were extremely friendly and helpful.) And since our auto insurance company can only write policies in Georgia, we switched to one that can write Florida policies.

We are now legal residents of Florida.

Florida does not have a requirement that we spend any minimum number of days in the state, but if all goes as we hope we will spend our winters here, fall in North Georgia/East Tennessee, and the rest of the year wherever the wind takes us.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

 

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Revisiting an Old Church

Bethel Presbyterian Church, Chattooga County, Georgia

Canon 6D, 28-105 f3.5-4.5mm EF lens

(Click to enlarge)

In a remote area south of Summerville, Georgia, on a road so narrow that when I encountered another truck the same size as mine I had to stop and let him go by, I turned off the paved road and took a dirt road for a short distance to revisit Bethel Presbyterian Church, built in 1849, and Bethel Yard, its large and very old cemetery which actually predates the church.

In one of the graves in Bethel Yard lies the Reverend T.C. Crawford, who founded Bethel Church and was its pastor until his death in 1885. He also established at Bethel a school called Armuchee Academy, the first high school in Chattooga County.

In this obscure place, in a community called Dirt Town, once existed several thriving churches and an academy that drew students from as far away as Alabama and Tennessee. Now only the cemetery and the empty building remains. Although no longer in use, Bethel is being well cared-for. I encountered no one when I visited the church, but some is mowing the grounds, and when I looked inside the church I saw scaffolding, which indicated that someone had been repairing the ceiling.

I first visited the church in 2016, while working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia. Now I'm working on a second edition.

Georgia has a rich history, and the many old, mostly abandoned but still beautiful churches scattered around the state represent an integral part of it.

 

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

 

Tags: photography, Dave Jenkins, Georgia history, Presbyterian Church, Chattooga County, Canon 6D camera, Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5 EF lens

Monday, May 24, 2021

I Have a Secret!

 I have a secret!

Mamiya RB67, Mamiya-Sekor127mm f4.5 lens

I loved working in my commercial photography studio in Chattanooga. It was a great space with high ceilings, a large darkroom, and an office and display room.

One of my strengths as a commercial photographer was finding "real people" models. Clients loved this, because it saved them money and I was able to deliver results they were happy with. My "secret" was that most of the people I recruited were from my church. The two little connivers above were the daughters of church friends.

One of my clients was a manufacturer of small rugs called Playrugs, which were very popular in the 1990s. I photographed many of the rugs for their advertising and worked with a number of different child models, but this photo has always been my favorite.

The setup for the playrug shots was simple. I would position the rug on the studio floor, set up lights and camera, take light readings to determine proper exposure, then place my little models on the set and let them do their thing. I did very little directing because I found that by letting them interact and play they would often spontaneously assume poses that were better than any I might have thought up.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, film photography, Dave Jenkins, commercial photography, Mamiya RB67, Mamiya-Sekor lens 

 


Friday, May 21, 2021

On the Road Again

One of folk artist Howard Finster's creations at Howard
Finster's Paradise Gardens near Summerville, Georgia.
Olympus OM-D E-M5, Panasonic 14-140 f3.5-5.6 lens
(Click to enlarge)

Yesterday I was finally able to get down to some serious work on the second edition of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia for publisher W.W. Norton and Company of New York.

In 2016 I crisscrossed Georgia for more than 10,000 miles, exploring the nooks and crannies of the state. I visited old mills, covered bridges (almost every one in the state), courthouses, old churches and historic houses without number, and whatever else caught my fancy. And then I organized it all into 15 tours covering various parts of the state.

Each tour is carefully mapped out with precise driving directions and information about points of interest. Each chapter also includes a list of places to eat and to stay, attractions, and events.

For the second edition, each tour has to be retraced, taking note of anything that may have changed, and each restaurant, hotel, attraction, and event has to be contacted to make sure they are still functioning -- something always necessary, but especially important in these days of the dreaded virus.

Two of the tours cover points of interest in northwest Georgia. The one I retraced yesterday began at New Echota, the Cherokee capital near Calhoun, ran past Old Car City through Cartersville to the Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site and on to Rome and the Old Mill at Berry College, then back north to Howard Finster's Paradise Garden near Summerville, several sites in LaFayette and on to the Old Country Store in Villanow. The tour was about 175 miles, and there were many more sites that I've left out because the list is to long to include in this blog post. I also added one (new) old church because it was historically significant and was only a mile off the route.

I was happy to be able to complete this tour in one day, although I still have to write the changes into the manuscript and call several places for up-to-date information. Fourteen more to go, plus the editor has asked me to add one new tour, which will be in southeast Georgia.

The second edition won't be out until mid-2022, so if you can't wait to begin exploring Georgia's backroads, leave a comment or email me at djphoto@vol.com.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone


Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Unbearable!

A grizzly bear sighted from the tour bus on the way to Mount Denali.
Actually, there may be two of them. I can't tell for sure. I'll explain
why in a bit. Canon 6D with 75-300mm f4-5.6 EF lens at 300mm.
 

When we set off on our 50th anniversary trip to Alaska, Louise's single greatest desire was to see a grizzly bear up close (but not too close). She was sure the tour to the base of Denali would yield a sighting from the safety of the bus.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the day was heavily overcast, and when we got to the halfway point rest stop we were informed that the mountain was completely socked in and we would have to go back to Denali Village.

We did see a few bears, but to her bitter disappointment, they were so far away they might as well have been in the next county. The reason the photograph at the top of this post isn't very sharp is because it's a very small section cropped out of the center of the photo below. The bear is the little brown dot in the center.

The bear is the little brown dot in the center of the photo.
 

In fact, Louise was so disappointed that when we got home we went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, booked a room in a motel at Pigeon Forge, and spent two days driving the loop road in Cades Cove looking for bears. No luck. 

It was unbearable.

(Actually, I'm not sure if these were grizzly bears or Alaskan brown bears. I'm a little fuzzy on the subject.)

Photographs copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, Dave Jenkins, Alaska, Denali, grizzly bears, Canon 6D, EF 75-300 f4-5.6 lens, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cades Cove




Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Up the Mountain by Train

Two locomotives of the White Horse and Yukon Railway pull a string of passenger cars up a mountain, across a trestle, and into a tunnel on the way from Skagway, Alaska to White Pass. (Both photographs Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, Panasonic 14-140  f3.5-5.6 Lumix II lens)
 
 We began our 2015 50th anniversary trip to Alaska by flying into Fairbanks, the northern-most point on our itinerary, and worked our way south via the Alaskan Railway, stopping first at Denali National Park and then at Anchorage, before going on to Seward.

At Fairbanks we took a riverboat tour. At Denali National Park we rode a tour bus that was supposed to take us to the base of Denali but was cancelled about halfway there because the mountain was covered with clouds and fog. (More about that later.)

At Anchorage we took a tour bus around the city, and at Seward, before boarding our Carnival Cruise ship to Vancouver we took a boat tour to see whales and glaciers. The glaciers were spectacular as they "calved" (great chunks of ice broke off and fell into the sea), but the whales failed to show.

The cruise ship stopped at various points along the Alaskan coast and various tours were available at all of them, but we mostly just got off the boat and walked around. However, at Skagway, we took a tour that, for me, was one of the highlights of the entire trip: the White Pass and Yukon Railway from sea level at Skagway winding through spectacular (and sometimes scary) mountain scenery to nearly 3,000 feet at White Pass. One of the scariest parts was that this is a narrow-guage railroad -- which means that the train was running along sheer cliffs on rails that are only three feet apart. (Standard rails are four feet, eight and one-half inches apart.)

 

 Even scarier: an abandoned trestle from an earlier route of the railroad.

The White Pass and Yukon Railway was begun in 1898 at the peak of the Klondike Gold Rush to connect Skagway with Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, and facilitate access to the Klondike goldfields. It has been designated an international historic civil engineering landmark.

People close to my age may remember a radio program for kids called "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon," the adventures of a Canadian Mountie and his dog during the gold rush days in the Klondike.

Photographs and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Sunday, May 16, 2021

The View from 84

Majestic Denali, photographed from the train moving south from Denali National Park to Anchorage. I'm not sure about the name of the river. The camera was a Canon EOS 6D and the lens was a Canon EF 75-300mm f4-5.6. It took a liberal application of the Clarity slider in Photoshop to make the mountain stand out as much as it does. I was probably 30 miles away at the time. Taken on our 50th anniversary trip in 2015.

 My apologies for failing to post Friday. It was my 84th birthday.

Birthdays are always a good time to pause and take stock of one's life.

I'm grateful to have lived this long. Nothing is ever certain, of course, but I was hopeful that I might have a long life, because my father lived to be 90, and my mother to 91. Good genes count.

One of my heroes is the great, probably the very greatest, architectural photographer, Julius Schulman. He retired in his 80s, got bored, and went back to work until his death at age 98, getting around on a walker with an assistant to carry his large-format camera and tripod.

I still enjoy commercial and architectural photography, but don't expect to be doing much more of them because of the changes we've made in our lifestyle. Our house was sold last January and our home is now wherever we park our RV.

I photographed what will probably be my last wedding on April 25th. The principal photographer with whom I've worked since 2013 is winding down her wedding business and transitioning into another field, and I don't feel like breaking in a new principal shooter. And again, of course, there's the matter of having no fixed location. I've always enjoyed photographing weddings and will miss doing them.

None of this means I'm about to get out of the photography business. One of the specific reasons I chose this career was that I wanted to do something no one could make me retire from.

So, as some doors close, others open. I'm currently working on a second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia, and have an open offer from W.W. Norton to do Backroads and Byways of Tennessee. (My editor does not know how old I am, which is probably a good thing.)

Also, there are magazine articles to write, many places I haven't yet seen, to be photographed, and my own book projects to finish, especially Lost Barns of Rock City. Like Robert Frost, I hope to have ". . .miles to go before I sleep."

 

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone


Wednesday, May 12, 2021

An Alaskan Scene

 

Taken from the railway car as we were leaving Denali National Park.

Olympus OM-D EM-5, Panasonic Lumix II 14-140 f3.5-5.6 lens


In 2015, Louise and I went to Alaska in celebration of our 50th anniversary. We flew to Fairbanks, then worked our way south on the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park, and then on to Anchorage. I didn't get many photographs that I'm happy with on this trip, but there were some spectacular views of the mountains and the Nenana River, which forms the eastern boundary of the park, as we were leaving Denali Village on the train. 

Since the Alaska trip wasn't really about photography, I carried what for me was a minimal kit -- a Canon EOS 6D with two lenses and an Olympus OM-D E-M5 (the name is almost bigger than the camera). I might as well have left the Canon at home, because I found myself using the Olympus with its do-it-all Panasonic zoom lens most of the time. 

In 2017 I switched to Fuji X-system cameras and lenses and sold the Canon equipment. In 2018 I sold most of the Olympus gear as well. I'm happy with my Fujis and don't miss the Canons at all, and the Olympus not much. But to give credit where it's due, the Olympus E-M5s are light, easy to handle, and great picture-takers. That Panasonic zoom lens is no slouch, either.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

 

Tags: photography, David B. Jenkins, Dave Jenkins, Alaska, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Denali National Park, Nenana River, Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, Panasonic Lumix II 14-140 f3.5-5.6 lens

Monday, May 10, 2021

The Importance of Printing

 

Some of the calendars and booklets our children

and grandchildren have created for us.

 

This current generation has been the most photographed in history, yet will be the first since photography was invented to have no photographic history.

Think about it. Do you remember looking at family pictures when you were growing up? Was that important to you in giving you a sense of your family's history? Unless you take action, your children and grandchildren will not have that experience.

It has been estimated that more photographs are being made every day than the sum total of all the photographs made from the time photography was invented until the year 2000. Yet, where are all those millions of photos? Why are they not creating a rich photographic heritage for families all around the globe?

The answer is that they don't actually exist. They are only collections of electrical impulses in cameras, cell phones, computers, or the cloud. They have never been given actual, tangible existence. They have never been printed.

You can save those photo files on your computer hard drive, a DVD, a back-up hard drive, a flash drive, or the cloud. And you should. But those media all can deteriorate. And even if they don't, at some point in the future no one is going to have software to read those files. (Floppy discs were common only 20 or 25 years ago, but try finding a way to read them now.) But with reasonable care, prints are permanent.

You don't have to be a professional photojournalist to document the life of your family. I began with a very simple snapshot camera. The simplest digital cameras, even cell phone cameras, are capable of better sharpness and clarity than even the finest 35mm cameras we had back in the day.

So what is the best camera? The best camera is the one you have with you. One of my daughter's-in-law has an old Canon 20D, the other uses her cell phone. Both of them document their families diligently. But that's only the first step. The next is to get those digital files out of the cameras and into print. If you don't download and save those photos they will almost certainly be lost.

So -- make prints! There are many online labs to which you can send your files for printing, or you can order prints at your neighborhood drug store or WalMart. Or you can take advantage of a gift of the digital age and have your photo files printed into booklets by online companies such as Blurb, Shutterfly, and many others. Those companies also make calendars, and so, each year for many years, daughter-in-law Bonnie has given Louise and me a calendar full of family pictures.

Early in her marriage to my friend Ben, Kelley Hoagland began printing booklets of their travels and other events. As their three daughters were born she kept on photographing and making more booklets. Her girls will have a comprehensive photo-history for themselves and their descendants.

(Along the way, Kelley, who trained as an occupational therapist, found that photography was the missing creative outlet in her life and is now a very fine family and wedding photographer.)

Photograph and text copyright 2021 David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, film photography, digital photography, cameras, cell phone cameras, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins,  family photography, prints, albums, Blurb, Shutterfly

Friday, May 7, 2021

The Book of Marlee

Christmas, 2008. Four-year-old Marlee samples her grandmother's cake icing.

Canon EOS 5D Classic, Canon 24-85 f3.5-4.5 EF lens


Blog Note: This post is one of a series on documenting your family. More to come.

For many years our sons and their families came to the farm for extended stays at Christmas and New Years. Those were great times. One of the primary reasons we bought the farm property and built the house we did was to create a place where our children and grandchildren would love to come. 

In those days we had a number of small albums of 4x6 prints scattered around the house. At Christmas, 2011, seven-year-old Marlee, our youngest granddaughter, wandered around the house looking through the albums. Finally, she said to Louise:  "Where Are My Pictures, Grandma?"

"I'm afraid they're in Grandpa's camera, sweetheart," answered her grandmother. And so they were. 

I made prints for 35 years, because that was mostly what people had to do if they wanted to see their photographs made on film. (Slides were an exception, but most people didn't shoot slides.) Unfortunately, I got out of the habit of making prints when I switched to digital photography in 2003. I did occasionally make prints, but not many. Marlee was born in 2004, so although I took many pictures of her, they were indeed "in Grandpa's camera."

Spurred by this, I undertook to go through all my pictures of Marlee. I also raided Kim's and Don's cell-phones for a few pictures I didn't have, edited them all down to 150, and ordered 4x6 prints which I put in an album labeled "The Book of Marlee: the First Eight Years," and gave it to her on her eighth birthday. She was thrilled, and her mother told me that for years after that she would sometimes take out her album and look through it.

If I were doing this now, I might, instead of ordering prints, have the photos printed in a booklet such as those offered by Blurb, Shutterfly, and others. You can even get them from WalMart and Amazon. More on this later. 

Photograph and text copyright 2021 David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, film photography, digital photography, cameras, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins,  family photography, prints, albums, Blurb, Shutterfly

 

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Precious Memories

The young Jenkins family at Jonathan Dickinson

State Park, Florida, November, 1968

 

Blog Note: This post is one of a series on documenting your family. More to come.

This photograph was made with a Kodak Instamatic 104 camera, probably the least expensive one they made. Even the cheapest phone camera or digital point-and-shoot is capable of almost infinitely better sharpness and clarity than the Kodak 126 film negatives from my little Instamatic -- in fact, there is just barely enough quality to make a 5x7 print. Yet, this picture is precious beyond words to me.

I had a brief flirtation with photography while in high school, and for a time owned a good camera for the day - a Voightlander Vito B with a good lens. I lost interest while in college, and when Barbara and I were married, we got some kind of Brownie camera and made a few 3x3-inch black-and-white prints. I wish we had done more. 

I had that same camera when Louise and I were married, but shortly before Don was born the shutter began sticking. I found an ad in a magazine offering a free Instamatic camera and five cartridges of film. All I had to do was send the five cartridges to their lab for processing at a reasonable fee, and the camera would be mine.  

This photo was made on Thanksgiving weekend, 1968, while we were tent-camping at Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Hobe Sound, on Florida's southeast coast. Rob, seven at the time, and Don, five months, do not appear to be enjoying canoing as much as their mother and I, but this picture documents a great time in our life as a young family. The photographic quality is marginal, but adequate to preserve a precious memory.

Photograph copyright1968- 2021, Text copyright 2021 David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins, Kodak, Instamatic, 126 film cartridge, Voightlander, Florida, Hobe Sound, Jonathan Dickinson State Park, film photography