The Rebirth of the Birdhouse Barn

 

The Birdhouse Barn in its original location beside Interstate 75 in Dalton, Georgia.

 

This post was adapted from my book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.

Clark Byers was the man who went all around the country painting “See Rock City” signs on barns. He also invented the Rock City birdhouse, which he intended to use as a mailbox but the U.S. Postal Service wouldn’t let him.

Rock City picked up on the idea and began selling the birdhouses. 1n 1967, they asked Byers if he would paint the barn on the old Tibbs farm in Dalton, right beside I-75, to look like one of the birdhouses. So Clark painted it with the help of his oldest son Freddie. A year later he retired from painting barns. As far as I know this was the only one painted to resemble a birdhouse. At that time the barn could easily be seen from the highway. Later, trees grew up beside the road and made the barn difficult to see unless you knew where to look.

In 2001, as I was selling my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era at the Prater’s Mill Country Fair near Dalton, a man stopped at my booth and talked with me for a few minutes. It turned out that he was the pastor of a congregation in Dalton, and that they had bought the Tibbs property. He said they hated to destroy the old barn, but they wanted to build a new church on the site.

I suggested that he call Bill Chapin at Rock City. To make a long story short, he did, and Rock City sent a crew to take the barn apart piece by piece. They moved it to a field at the foot of Lookout Mountain and put it all together again.

 For more than 80 years, people have looked at the barns and then gone up the mountain to “See Rock City.” Now you can go up the mountain to Rock City and look down to see a Rock City barn. 

Disassembling the barn in sections.

 

 Re-assembling the barn with many new components at the foot of Lookout Mountain.

 

An eagle's eye view of the Birdhouse Barn from Rock City.

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

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

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

A Cross in the Sky

Chicago Skyline, 1989

Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 24mm f2.8, Fujichrome 100 film

(Click to enlarge)

 This is a re-post of a blog I wrote last year.

 A famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow begins:       

    "I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I know not where."

Longfellow was actually writing a metaphor about a song. But a photograph is like that. Like shooting an arrow into the air. We make our photographs, and if they're published who knows where they may be seen or whom they may influence, or in what way.

Throughout most of the 1980s one of my principal clients was an organization called the Christian Businessmen's Committee -- CBMC for short. Their mission was training and encouraging Christian businessmen to evangelize and train other businessmen to reach still more people for Christ.

In the late '80s they developed a strategy to concentrate their efforts on larger cities, and in 1989 and '90 I created seven audio-visual programs for them to advance this outreach. They sent me to cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to interview people and make photographs, not only of the people, but also background photos -- street scenes, buildings, landmarks, etc., in the various cities to make each AV program a complete story.

Walking the streets of downtown Chicago, I chanced to look up, liked the composition of the buildings and sky, and snapped a few photos with my faithful Olympus OM2n camera without a great deal of thought. I don't remember what lens was used, but probably the Zuiko 24mm f2.8. I never carried anything wider in those days.

The photo was used in one or more of the audio-visual programs, and later, on the cover of the CBMC annual report.

The CBMC headquarters are in Chattanooga, and from time to time they would bring in small groups of men from around the country for ministry training. One Sunday morning I was talking to some CBMC staff members at my church. They were there with a group of men who had come to town for training. I was introduced as the one who had created the audio-visuals, and one man shook my hand and said "I'm here because of your picture of the cross in the Chicago skyline. I saw that and said to myself 'Christ in the cities!' I want to be part of that!"

He left his job and went into full-time ministry with CBMC.

I've shot a lot of photos into the air in my career. It's nice to find out, once in a while, where one has landed.

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

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

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Count Your Blessings

 A good message for all seasons. Old Dial Road, Fannin County, Georgia. 11/5/2008

 Although I lived in northwest Georgia for more than forty years and loved the area, I also loved and found myself drawn to the mountains of north central and northeast Georgia as well. Over the years, that's where most of my day-long photo excursions took me.

A jaunt on November 5th, 2008 found me exploring the backroads of Fannin County. The fall had been mild, so the colors were still in full array. It was a good day for photography. I made several pictures that are in my online gallery, with more to come.

I have no idea who put this little scene together -- I don't remember seeing a church or school nearby -- but obviously someone wanted to honor the season and inspire passersby with the Thanksgiving message. So I'm glad to pass it along to you.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. In many ways, in fact, I like it better than Christmas. Maybe it's the elderly curmudgeon in me, but I think Thanksgiving deserves to be celebrated and fully enjoyed for itself -- not swallowed up by the Christmas season, as is becoming increasingly the case. For that matter, even Halloween seems to be in danger of being swallowed up by Christmas! 

So let's enjoy our families and be grateful to God for all he has given us. Count your blessings.

(Photograph made with Canon 5D Classic digital camera and Canon 85mm f1.8 EF lens.)

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

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

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

 

Finding My Voice

 

The Frank Inman House, Martin County, Indiana c.1972

I went to school with the Inman children in the 1950s. In the early 1960s,

Frank was killed in a hunting accident and the family moved away.

The house, a clapboard-over-logs structure, was never again occupied.

Rolleicord Vb Twin-Lens Reflex, Agfa film

 

Today's blog is a re-post of one I wrote on February 7th, 2020.

I began photographing in 1968 and for more than 25 years photographed anything and everything that I thought might make an interesting picture. My commercial work was moderately successful; my editorial and documentary work somewhat more so. But there was no organizing principle to my work because I did not know who I was as a photographer. I had not found my "voice."

One thing that always puzzled me was that I felt drawn to photograph old structures. In the early 1970s, on a trip to visit my parents in the sparsely settled hill country of southern Indiana, I spent a day driving around and photographing the homes of people I had known in my youth. Many were abandoned; some even falling down. I told my wife later that I didn't know why I was drawn to do that -- I certainly would never make a dime from it! 

Surprisingly, though, I eventually did. In 1994, I was commissioned by Rock City Gardens of Lookout Mountain, Georgia, to find and photograph every one of the still-standing barns that had been painted with the white on black "See Rock City" message. Using their barn-painting crew's old records from the 1960s, I drove more than 35,000 miles over an 18-month period, as I could steal time away from my studio, visited more than 500 sites in 15 states, and photographed the more than 250 barns still in existence.

Rock City Barns: A Passing Era was published in 1996 and became an instant best-seller. Sometime later I received a letter from the well-known art photographer Maria von Matteson, who proposed arranging a joint exhibit with her and the great Florida Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher.

The show never happened, but one thing that Maria said to me stuck: she said "You need to write an artist's statement that defines you." So I did, and this is what I came up with.

 

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.

As a commercial, architectural, and occasional wedding photographer, I've done a lot of things that don't fit within that statement. Yet, for the past 24 years I've known who I am as a photographer and have sought to work as much as possible within that vein. How well I've succeeded will be for others to judge, but I know who I am and what I want to do for as long as I am able. 

 

Visit my online storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ to see a selection of my photographs for sale.

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

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

When Is a Rock City Barn Not a barn?

This sign in North Chattanooga finally caught my attention

just before it was sand-blasted into oblivion.

 People naturally assume that every structure that carried a "See Rock City" sign is/was actually a barn. The fact is, however, that while most were indeed barns, many were not. Off the top of my head I can think of at least four small country stores, quite a few sheds and garages, and at least three free-standing silos. Even a restaurant.

And that doesn't count signs painted on the sides of commercial buildings. Somehow, though, I was completely oblivious to the sign on the building on South Broad Street in Chattanooga even though I passed it on the way home from my studio every day. 

I almost lost out completely on the sign at the top of this post, even though I passed it frequently without my brain in gear. It was located on Frazier Avenue, just across the river from downtown Chattanooga and right by the north end of the Walnut Street Bridge. I probably would have passed it by again if my attention had not been caught by the fact that a crew was sand-blasting it away to renovate an old storefront into a Subway Restaurant.

Since Rock City did not retain these signs in their records, I suspect there were a lot more of them that I missed, both in Chattanooga and in other towns. 

I passed this sign on South Broad Street in Chattanooga every day without noticing it.

 Visit my online storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ to see a selection of my photographs for sale.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Back to Work on Another Book

This little barn on U.S. 27 just south of Rock Spring in Walker

County, Georgia has borne many signs over the years. But if you

dig through those layers of paint you will find SEE ROCK CITY.

 

In October, 1994 I was commissioned by See Rock City, Inc. to find and photograph all the still-standing barns that had at any time been painted with the famous "See Rock City" sign. They gave me a box of old file cards, the only existing records of the locations of the barns they had painted through the years.

Within a few months I became aware that there were other Rock City barns in existence that had been lost from Rock City's records. You can read about how that happened here.

As I continued my search, following Rock City;s old records, I discovered about 20 more such barns. I always thought of them as "lost" barns. The ones I found were included in my best-selling book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era. (Still available at amazon.com and used bookstores.)

After the book came out I received a number of letters telling me about other barns that had been missed. I also did some exploring on my own. And then I sat on the project, doing other things while years passed. But now it's time to get back to work. I need a project to do and I have 50 or so lost barns in my files. That's enough for a book.

I'm editing out the best pictures, re-scanning a few that I scanned too small the first time around, and doing the necessary photoshop work to make each photograph look its best. When that is done, I will ship them off to Michael Largent, the very creative graphic artist who designed my book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait, and begin writing brief essays for the text.

I don't have money to publish a book, but I will be submitting proposals to publishers and also looking into sites such as GoFundMe. Meanwhile, if you happen to know a book publisher. . .

Visit my online storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ to see a selection of my photographs for sale.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Another Old Mill

The Skeenah Creek Mill. GA Hwy. 60, Fannin County

Tortuous, winding Georgia Highway 60 north of Dahlonega is a mountain driving experience you won't quickly forget. But the route takes you through some lovely scenery and treats you to one of North Georgia's hidden gems. 

In 1832, Willis Rabun Woody moved his family to the beautiful, remote valley called "Skeenah" by the Cherokees, meaning "Big Bear." Ten years later, in 1848, he built the little mill that still stands on Skeenah Creek. Although the mill is not currently in operation, it is well maintained and the wheel is still moving.

The mill is behind the Skeenah Creek Campground, and even if you're not camping the gracious people who own the property will welcome you to visit the mill. However, if you should happen to be traveling in a camper you could hardly find a more delightful place to set up and spend a few days. 

The photograph was made with a Canon 6D digital camera and a Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens.

Visit my online storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ to see a selection of my photographs for sale.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Finding Your Voice

Rock City Barn GA-12

GA Hwy. 42, Monroe County, Georgia

Canon EOS A2, Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5 EF lens

Today's blog is a re-post of one I wrote on March 4, 2020.

In the absence of any clear idea of what they hope to achieve, photographers often sub-consciously seek to define themselves by their equipment. It can be fun for those who can afford it, but it avoids the real question: Who am I as a photographer? What is my passion? Until you can answer that, you "ain't gonna get no satisfaction." Because ultimately, it's not the tools nor the act of photography that counts. It's the subject, your relationship to it, and your feelings about it.

The photographer who finds his voice, his niche, his passion, most likely will also find that he can do whatever he wants to do with a relatively small amount of equipment. An exception, of course, would be the photographer whose passion is birds in flight, action sports, or auto racing. But for myself, I can do everything I want to do with a few Fuji bodies and three or four lenses; equipment which is also sufficient for the occasional commercial gig I get.

As I've said several times (but who's counting?), I found my voice, my passion, in photography in the early 1970s, but did not recognize it for what it was until years later.

I have always been drawn to the old, the abandoned, the worn out, the passing away. Abandoned buildings, abandoned cars – whatever man has used, worn out, and discarded -- fascinate me, because they speak of worn out lives, lived and discarded with neither name nor history.

FOR SALE (Unidentified Auto from the Mid-1930s)

U.S. Hwy. 411, Gordon County, Georgia

Canon EOS A2, Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5 EF lens

I am especially drawn to the remnants of mid-twentieth-century roadside culture because I lived it. In the 1950s and '60s I hitch-hiked the two-lane highways of America. I saw the Rock City barns, the Mail Pouch Tobacco barns, the roadside fast-food stands built to look like giant chickens or hot dogs, the wigwam motels. Like Tennyson's Ulysses, "I am a part of all I have met." Or more accurately, all I have met is part of me.

I admire the work of nature photographers such as David Meunch and the late Galen Rowell, but am much more drawn to the work of the great observers of the human scene, such as Elliott Erwitt, Robert Doisneau, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I wish I could do what they do. I've tried, and I know I will never photograph insightful slices of life as well as they do. But I have a niche of my own, and I must be content. Rather than photographing nature or the human condition, my passion and my role is to document the interface between nature and the crumbling works of man.

 

Visit my online storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ to see a selection of my photographs for sale.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Meet the Storekeeper

  Jennifer Jenkins Steinmetz. The Storekeeper.

The lovely young lady in the photograph is Jennifer Steinmetz, my oldest granddaughter. A few months ago she asked me to send her some of my photographs because she had an idea -- a plan to create online storefronts to sell them.

Jennifer has a degree in Communications and has worked in marketing and public relations for several companies. Now a busy young mother with four children, the oldest just turning ten, she is also a blogger herself (currently in the process of creating a new blog), and a very fine writer. I don't know how she finds time to take on another project, but she's doing it. Our storefront is now live with 40 of my photographs and many more to come as she has time to do whatever she has to do to get them ready for online sales.

Visit our storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/. You might find something you like!

Jennifer, her husband Ben, and their four children. My

great-grandkids are smarter and better looking than yours.

 

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photographs copyright 2022 Hannah Mann at hannahmann.com. Text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

Reflections on an Abandoned House

Abandoned House, Armuchee Valley, Georgia

Please note: A selection of my photographs is now available for sale at very reasonable prices for yourself or for gifts. Visit my new storefront at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ I'll be writing more about this soon.

 

Exploring 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.

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.

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 second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled to be released in December, will not be released until June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone

Mother Love

 "Mother" and baby, for Women's East Pavilion

In the early 1990s, two of the major hospital in Chattanooga, Erlanger and Memorial, launched a joint venture: a new women's hospital to be named Women's East Pavilion. Ria Fisher, a creative director with whom I worked on many projects over the years, had the job of creating brochures, mailing pieces, wall art, and everything else needed to publicize the start-up. 

All the work was done over a period of several weeks in my studio at 730 Cherry Street in Chattanooga (a great space -- I still miss it!) We used non-professional models, mostly people I knew from church and other connections, and set up various scenes. In this photo a "mother" and baby (no actual relation to each other) were posed as if in a hospital. A space between two panels with a light playing on the wall behind them was used to simulate a window.

My workhorse studio camera, the Mamiya RB67 with a 127mm f4.5 Mamiya-Sekor lens was on a sturdy tripod and loaded, as always, with Fujichrome transparency film. We worked with the "mother" and baby until we got a number of good shots. This was one of my favorites. In addition to being used in an elaborate brochure and other publicity, it was made into a large framed print, about three by four feet, if I remember correctly, which hung in the hospital for years.

This was the first project Ria and I did together. We both received "Addy" awards from the Chattanooga Advertising Federation for our work. 

(The models, by the way, though "non-professional," were paid for their participation.)

The web site is live! Many of my photographs are now available for order at very reasonable prices for yourself or for gifts. https://davejenkins.pixels.com/

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone

Story Time

Young family on an Aslan carpet

Working as a commercial photographer in the Chattanooga-Northwest Georgia area, I got requests from time to time to photograph advertisements for carpets. I especially enjoyed them because they challenged my  my lighting skills. This particular one, as best I remember, was in the early 1990s and was for Aslan Carpets, which I think was based in Dalton. The assignment came to me, as often, through Michael Largent.

The models were not actually a family, but were non-related "real people" models recruited by Michael. The lighting was fairly straight-forward: two electronic flashes in umbrella reflectors. One was behind the models and to the right -- you can see the highlight on the right side (from camera position) of the man's face. The other was in front and slightly to the right of the models. Both lights were positioned to bring out the texture of the carpet.

I ran through two, ten-exposure rolls of Fuji film in my Pentax 6x7 medium-format camera. In most of the photos the little "family" was looking at the story-book. However, in one shot, the "mother" looked up at the "father" and the little girl looked up at the "mother," and that, of course, is the photograph that was chosen for the ad. 

Just another interesting day in the life of a commercial photographer.

Blog note: Very soon I will be posting a link to a web site where many of my pictures will be available for order at very reasonable prices for yourself or for gifts. Watch this space.

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone

The Nurse Is in Pink But My Face Is Red

Emergency Room Nurse at Emory Medical Center

Michael Largent is a graphic designer and creative director who has done just about everything in the design field. Currently he's rounding out a distinguished career by teaching graphic design at a college in Chattanooga. We first met when he was working his way through college as a newspaper photographer and have been friends for nearly 50 years.. Since he became an art director in the 1980s we have worked together on many, many projects  -- he says more than 50. I won't dispute that because I wasn't counting. Also, his memory is better than mine. He remembered something I had forgotten about the  project for Emory Medical Center -- that the models in my previous three posts were not hospital employees, as I stated, but non-professional "real people" models that he recruited. The "EMT" in my previous post, for instance, was actually the youth pastor at Michael's church. My face is red!

However, it appears that the young woman in pink may have been an actual nurse at the hospital.

Changing the subject somewhat, let me distract you from my embarrassment by calling your attention to the large empty space in the upper left of this photo and all the previous photos in this series. That space is where the ad copy goes. Photographs for advertising must always be composed so there's someplace for the message to go. 

Blog note: Very soon I will be posting a link to a web site where many of my pictures will be available for order at very reasonable prices for yourself or for gifts. Watch this space.

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone