And the Winner Is. . .

The Fuji X-system! Left to right, the X-T20 with the XC 16-50mm lens, the X-H1 with the XF 55-200mm lens, and the X-Pro 1 with the XF 27mm lens. Not in the picture are the XF 16-80 f4 and the XF 60mm f2.4 macro lens.

I’ve always preferred small and light cameras. I had a 13-year love affair with the Olympus OM film system that lasted until aging eyes necessitated a change to the Canon autofocus system. I stuck with Canon for 24 years, moving with them into the digital world in 2003 with larger cameras and heavier lenses. 

 

The tipping point for me came in 2010, when I hauled two Canon bodies and four lenses on a trip to Israel and Jordan. Sweating my load on the long walk into Petra, the ancient city carved into rock, I chanced to meet a man who was carrying only an Olympus E-P2 body with a tiny lens. I asked if I could hold his camera. What a revelation!

I had been reading about micro 4/3s, so when I got home, I ordered an Olympus E-PL1, then later, a pair of E-M5s and some lenses. I held onto my Canon kit for weddings, only upgrading the 5D to a 6D. Meanwhile, I read more and more about the Fuji X-series cameras.

In 2017 I made the break complete, selling my Canon and Olympus m4/3s equipment and buying Fuji X-system bodies and lenses. I was surprised to find that a Fuji X-T20 is actually a little smaller than an Oly E-M5 and did not handle as well for me. I had reached my small-size limit! However, a nifty little black leather half-case from Amazon made it handle just right. I'm happy with my choice, and the wedding photographer I worked with was happy with the files, which she (a Canon 5D4 shooter) described as "pretty."

 

I use the X-T20 most because it's small and light and easy to carry and handle, and the 16-50mm zoom is a good range for most of my photography. It's also very sharp. 

The Fuji X-H1 is larger and heavier, though not as heavy as my old Canons. I like it because it balances well with larger lenses, such as the 55-200, and with on-camera flash units. It also has a grip which can be attached that holds more batteries, which is handy for long-lasting events such as weddings. (Which unfortunately I don't do any more -- did my last one when I was 85.)

The X-Pro 1 is different in ways that I like. Bobby Tingle says "The X-Pro  is all about the shooting experience. It is not a tool meant to get out of the way of working. Instead, the X-Pro is meant to be part of the process of making the photograph. Taking more time and putting more thought into each push of the shutter button." 

 

I don't use the X-Pro as much as the others, but when I do, I enjoy it a lot. 

 

So these are my cameras. To some, I may seem to be under-equipped and my gear outmoded. But I have everything I need to do everything I want to do. Nothing new I could buy could improve on that, and I would rather spend my money on travel to new picture-making opportunities. 

 

(Photo: Fuji X-T1 (now sold), Fujicron 60mm f2.4 macro lens, Neewer studio flash.)

 

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 me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 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     cameras    Fuji X-T20    Fuji X-H1     Fuji X-Pro 1   Fuji X-T1     Fujicron XC 16-50mm lens    Fujicron XF 55-200mm lens    Fujicron XF 27mm lens    Fujicron XF 60mm macro lens     Fujicron XF 16-80 f4 lens     Neewer flash    Olympus OM film system    Olympus E-M5   Olympus E-P2    Olympus E-PL1    Canon EOS 5D     Canon EOS 6D

Final Words (for now) about How I came to Digital Photography

 

Civil War Bugle

Chickamauga National Military Park

Nikkormat, 100mm f2.8 Vivitar lens, Kodak Kodachrome 25 film

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Blog note: To wind up the discussion about my switch to digital photography, I'm re-posting this piece from June, 2021.)

In the early days of this century I was opposed to digital photography and thought I would never switch. I preferred the "look" of film and considered digital images flat and lacking in contrast. Also, to be honest, I was proud of my skills in shooting and processing film.

By early 2003 I was doing commercial photography with a Pentax 67 and a Fuji GX680, an enormous beast of a camera that made a negative nearly 2x3 inches in size, and photographing weddings with 35mm color negative film. Neither of these cameras was cheap to operate. Even with 35mm film, covering a wedding properly meant a significant outlay in film and processing costs.

Meanwhile, digital cameras were getting better, and prices, while still very high, were coming down.

At the Southwestern Photojournalism Seminar in Fort Worth, Texas in March, 2003, I had a long talk with my friend Bill Bangham, a distinguished photojournalist who was at that time editor of the award-winning Southern Baptist World Missions magazine The Commission. I told Bill my concern that digital photography would result in a loss of control, making me into a mere button-pusher, with most of the control going to the editor.

Bill responded that photographing digitally would give me more control, not less. So I began to consider digital more seriously. The outcome was that I sold my GX680 equipment and searched the sofa for loose change and bought Canon's recently introduced 10D for the princely sum (or so it seemed to me) of three thousand dollars -- almost six times what I paid for a Canon A2 film body in 1995.

To this day I have a love/hate relationship with digital photography. As I said above, I liked the "look" of film and still do. In fact, I process my photos to look as much like film as possible. And while some have complained about slide film's lack of dynamic range, I never found it to be a handicap.

But the photography world was changing and it was either change with it or be left behind. So I changed. But I still miss film. 

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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:    Dave Jenkins     photography     digital photography     film photography     wedding photography   Canon EOS 10D camera     Nikkormat      Vivitar     Fuji GX680 camera     Canon EOS A2 camera     Kodachrome     Southern Baptist World Missions     The Commission

Moving on with Digital Photography

 

My all-time favorite wedding photo. The priest grabbed the flowers and waved them around while the couple kissed. Canon 5D, 70-200 f4L lens.

As I wrote in my previous post, I was a little slow getting on board with digital photography. But when I saw that the six-megapixel Canon 10D could make a 16x20-inch print indistinguishable from one made from a  2-1/4 x 2-3/4-inch medium format film negative, I knew that digital was here to stay.

The 10D, though a ground-breaker for me, was not a fully refined product. The auto-focus was slow, and sometimes not quite accurate. And the files were noisy at higher ISOs, although I did shoot and deliver some prints made at 1600. It wasn't long until I moved up a step to the 20D.

The 20D, although still using an APS-C, or half-frame sensor, was a much better camera. It had an eight megapixel sensor, rather than six, and the auto-focus was much quicker and more accurate. I owned four or five of them, all told. Even after I acquired a full-frame, 12-megapixel 5D in 2006 I used a 20D alongside it for several years. 

I stopped booking weddings in 2008 and only worked as a second-shooter from that point on. I was getting more architectural assignments by that time, and the 5D handled them with ease.

Beth. May, 2003. One of my last film weddings.

 In 2010, after lugging the 5D and several lenses around Israel and Jordan, I became very interested in the new m4/3s cameras that blogger and master commercial photographer Kirk Tuck was touting and bought a tiny Olympus E-PL1. That was soon followed by a pair of Oly E-M5s, very capable 16 megapixel cameras which made the majority of photographs in my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

In 2014 I upgraded the 5D to a 6D, and in 2018 made the final switch, selling my Canon and Olympus equipment and buying Fuji X-series cameras and lenses. They are great and I am happy. No more switching. 

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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     wedding photography   Canon EOS 20D camera      Canon EOS 5D camera      Canon EOS 6D camera     Olympus E-PL1 camera     Olympus E-M5 camera     Fuji X-series cameras     Kirk Tuck

Making the Big Switch

Elizabeth dances with her new husband at her wedding.

 I was a film photographer for 35 years -- 1968 to 2003. My exposure technique was carefully honed. I developed my own color slides and developed and printed my black and white film. And I enjoyed it all. When digital came along I didn't want anything to do with it.

And yet. . . I was doing quite a few weddings in those days, shooting color negative film. Processing the film and making 4x6 or 5x5 proofs in house was not economically feasible, but lab costs ran about 75 cents per shot. And my competitors were switching to digital and pocketing the savings.

After talking with my friend Bill Bangham, editor of Commission magazine, which had won many awards for photographic excellence, even against such competition as National Geographic, I decided to take the plunge. And plunge it was, as I had to sell my extremely capable Fuji GX680 in order to raise the $3,000 to buy a Canon 10D. Then I set about, at age 66, to teach myself Photoshop!

To give myself some learning space, I decided to do a few weddings with both digital and film cameras. The first was the wedding of Elizabeth and Marc in June, 2003. The photograph at the top was made with the 10D at an ISO of 800, which was pushing it a bit, and the lens was wide open at f1.8. The resulting picture is blurred, but I included it in their album because this faulty image captures the spirit of the occasion far better than a perfect, needle-sharp photo could have done.

This was my first use of a digital camera at an actual wedding. However, a few weeks before that, I used the 10D for a bridal portrait.

 Leslie's bridal portrait.

 Leslie's wedding was coming up not long after Elizabeth's, but she requested a pre-wedding bridal portrait session. I normally used a Pentax 67 medium format camera for these assignments, but decided to take the Canon 10D as well and used both cameras for each pose, so this was the 10D's actual first professional outing. I chose a file from the 10D and a negative of a similar shot from the Pentax and had the lab make a 16x20 print of each. Almost no one, including the lab technician himself, could tell which was which. To me and others who saw the prints that was pretty convincing evidence that digital was something to consider seriously.

Now, I hardly ever shoot film any more, but I'm still nostalgic for it.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      film photography     wedding photography   Canon EOS 10D camera      Pentax 6x7 camera      Fuji GX680 camera     bridal portraits     Commission Magazine

The Blogging Life

  This is no bull! U.S. Highway 41, Dooly County, Georgia.

 Blogging is like having a baby, then waking up pregnant again the next morning.

My online friend Jim Grey blogs six days a week at https://blog.jimgrey.net/. He calls his blog Down the Road, and covers a wide variety of interesting subjects, including photography. I don't know how he does it.

Jim recently took a few weeks off to do what I would call "readjusting his perspective about life and blogging". I can understand that, although I blog less frequently than Jim and my mind is not as fertile as his.

Being a last-minute kind of guy, I normally write this blog the evening before it posts. Sometimes I simply can't think of anything to write, and the post doesn't appear until the next day, or even the day after. And sometimes, as I say, life simply does get in the way. Louise and I are no longer young (on the calendar, not at heart or in attitude), and we spend more time than I like to think about on doctors and physical therapy.

The thing that helps me most in blogging is my library of pictures, accumulated over a lifetime of photography. When I can't think of anything to write, I look for a picture I think you'll enjoy. Sometimes I write about the photo; other times I just hang it there for you to look at and write about something else. Like today. 

I hope you like the picture of the statuesque bull giving me the eye. I found him along U.S. Highway 41 in south Georgia's Dooly County when Michael Largent and I made a photo-trip to south Georgia in 2006. I photographed Mr. Bull with my Canon EOS 5D Classic and the Canon EF 24-85mm lens.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      blogging    Jim Grey      Canon EOS 5D camera      Canon EF 24-85mm lens      south Georgia

Dooly County     U.S. Highway 41

Who Needs More Megapixels?

This is a partial crop. I'll show a full crop further down.

 On June 10th I wrote a post titled "How Many Megapixels Do You Need?" The answer I gave was "not many." And that's true -- most of the time, and for most of us.

However, some photographers, especially those photographing birds or wildlife, may find that even their 800 or 1000mm lenses cannot get them close enough. They need to crop, and also maintain the quality of their images while doing so. That's where cameras with high megapixel counts come in.

This is the uncropped version of the photograph above.

This pair of pileated woodpeckers were approximately 40 yards from my kitchen window. I was using a Fuji X-T20 camera and the longest lens I owned at the time, the inexpensive but very sharp Fujinon XC 50-230 f4.5-6.3. At full extension the focal length was equivalent to a 345mm lens on a full-frame camera.

This is the final crop. Well more than a hundred percent and still very sharp. In fact, I clicked on View and Actual Pixels in Photoshop and the eyes and feathers are still fairly sharp. But you can't go a whole lot farther with a 24 megapixel sensor.

I'm happy with these pictures, but since I seldom do this kind of photography it's not worth my while to buy a high-megapixel camera and jam up my hard drive with over-large files. Those who need this kind of capability know who they are. The rest of us, not so much.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      megapixels     pileated woodpeckers      Fuji X-T20 digital camera      Fujinon XC 50-230mm lens      Photoshop

Just Ramblin'

 Abandoned store/gas station. Probably U.S. Highway 19 north of Dahlonega.

 From about 2004 to 2010 I did a lot of rambling around the northeast Georgia mountains. Even though I lived in northwest Georgia, northeast Georgia seemed richer to me in the things I liked to photograph

I didn't have any set purpose in mind, but as I made these photographs, ideas for the book that ultimately became Georgia: A Backroads Portrait began to take shape in my mind. And although I have not yet found a publisher for the book, I firmly believe it is my best work. I am a visual historian of mid-twentieth roadside culture and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of life.

 Batesville General Store. GA Highways 197/255, Habersham County.

Although neither of these pictures made it into the book, many of the others that I took on these northeast Georgia trips did. But as I put the book together, with the help of my friend Michael Largent, the distinguished graph designer and design teacher, I was suprised to find that at least as many of the selected photographs came from my own northwest Georgia as from northeast Georgia. Go figure.

Both of these photos were made with the underrated but very good eight megapixel Canon EOS 20D.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      travel      Canon EOS 20D      Northwest Georgia mountains      Northeast Georgia  mountains      Habersham County     Dahlonega     Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Crawfordville, Georgia

The single-turret Taliaferro County courthouse. Funky High Victorian Eclectic style.

Crawfordville is an unique little east central Georgia town. With a population of about 530, it's the county seat of Taliaferro (pronounced "Tolliver"—don't ask me why) County. With 1462 residents in 2020, Taliaferro is the least populous county in Georgia and has the second smallest population east of the Mississippi River. In fact, I've always wondered if the county was only able to afford one turret for its courthouse.

Nonetheless, Crawfordville and Taliaferro County are well-known in the film industry and are very popular locations for movie-making. Thirteen movies, including Get Low (2009), Pushing up Daisies (2007), Sweet Home Alabama (2001), Neon Bible (1994), Stars and Bars (1987), GORP (1979), and Summer of my German Soldier (1978), have been filmed in whole or in part in Crawfordville. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Crawfordville’s downtown has hardly changed since the early 1900s, making it a perfect movie set. 

 Crawfordville's one-block-long business district looks as it did in the early 1900s.

 A. H. Stephens State Park borders Crawfordville on the north. We camped there for two weeks in the summer of 2021 and enjoyed eating at Nicky's restaurant in the business block.

The park offers facilities for camping, boating, hiking, and picnicking on its 1177 acres; however, it may be best known for its 21 miles of horseback riding trails and facilities for horsecamping.

Near the park entrance is Liberty Hall. Built in 1875, it was the home of Confederate Vice-President and Georgia governor Alexander Hamilton Stephens. It has been fully restored and houses one of Georgia's largest collections of Civil War artifacts.

Not Crawfordville Presbyterian Church?

 

I've always thought this was the Crawfordville Presbyterian Church, but apparently I was mistaken. I made the photo on film sometime in the 1990s, but my travel notebook from that period was lost several years ago. It's loss is often a serious handicap. I'm pretty sure this church is in Crawfordville, but it is not the Presbyterian church according to the pictures I've found online. Any readers from Crawfordville who can help me out?

 

Photos: The courthouse and street scene were photographed with a Canon EOS 5D Classic and the Canon EF 24-85mm lens. The church was photographed on film, but since my notebook was lost, I don't know which camera was used.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      travel      Canon EOS 5D Classic      Georgia      Crawfordville       Taliferro County     A.H. Stephens State Park     Canon EF 24-85mm lens

How many Megapixels Do You Need?

 Fall at our pond on Deer Run Farm. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

How many megapixels must your digital camera have to make good photos? 

The answer is -- many fewer than you probably think!

The photo above was made with an Olympus E-M5, with a sensor only about one fourth the size of the sensors in so-called full frame cameras, and only 16 megapixels. Yet, the picture you see was printed 48 inches wide (that's four feet, in case you weren't too good at math), and is satisfyingly sharp. It hung above our fireplace every fall for several years.

Short's Mill, Clarkesville, Georgia.

This photograph of Short's Mill was made with a Canon 5D, the original model, often referred to as the Classic. It had a 12-megapixel, full frame sensor. I used it with great satisfaction for eight years. The photo runs across two pages in my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. No one has ever suggested it isn't sharp enough.

Fellow photo-blogger Bill Fortney. a Fuji camera user, decided to select his favorite 30 photographs from the last 12 years. To his great surprise, 28 of the 30 were made with the 16-megapixel Fuji X-T1. Read about it here.  

I currently use two Fuji cameras -- An X-T20 and an X-H1. They each have 24-megapixel sensors, which I consider ideal. Enough for all the enlargeability one could wish, yet not big enough to overload my hard drive with unnecessarily large files.

But the camera ads and most of the photography blogs and web sites will tell you that you need more, more, more megapixels. I understand that. They want to keep you spending, spending, spending to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. It's all about the money. So if you simply must have the latest and greatest and can afford it, follow their lead.

My advice? If you have cameras you like, that give you good results, save your money.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      Olympus E-M5      Canon EOS 5D Classic      Fuji X-T1      Fuji X-T20       Fuji X-H1     Short's Mill

The Best Way to Learn Photography

Man of Mayalan village, in the northern Guatemalan mountains.

Photography looks easy. Modern cameras focus for us, set the exposure (and often get it right, or close enough), can fire off a dozen frames so we can choose the best one (assuming at least one of them will be good), and can shoot hundreds of frames and store them all on a tiny card. It's all amazingly convenient. And you might even get a few worthwhile pictures that way.

But that is something anyone can do. Good photography isn't easy, no matter what the camera ads tell you. So, how do you rise to the level of making pictures that please you consistently?

One of the best ways I've found to improve your photography is to study your own pictures. Look through your photographs. When you find one you especially like, ask yourself what it is that you like about it. Of course you will like pictures of subjects that are important to you, but that's not what I'm talking about. Look at the composition, the way a picture is framed. Look at the light. How is it revealing the subject? How about timing? Did you shoot a little too soon or too late? Is the exposure appropriate, or is it too light or too dark? If you think the picture could be improved, ask yourself how you could make it better. Likewise, study the failures. How could you have made them better?

Another man of Mayalan. Which do you prefer? Why?

Look at your own photographs with a critical eye, and also look at the work of other photographers to see what you can learn from them. There are scads of photographs online, but I prefer to study them in books. Libraries have always been a resource for me. Check out your local library to see what they have. 

Photos: Olympus OM camera, Vivitar 75-205 f3.8 lens. Not a particularly distinguished lens, but in sharp light it gives sharp results. Fujichrome 100 film.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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      travel      Guatemala      Mayalan      Olympus OM cameras       Fujichrome 100 film     Vivitar 75-205mm f3.8 lens

Up, Up and Away!

 Ready to launch, waiting for the wind.

In the late 1970s/early '80s, McCarty's Bluff on Lookout Mountain was the setting for the World Hang-gliding championships, with teams coming from as far away as Australia to compete. The event was sponsored by Glider Rider magazine, and I was commissioned by the publisher, Tracy Knauss to document the first few years of the event.

Lookout Mountain Flight Park, located on Georgia Highway 189, about 20 minutes southwest of Chattanooga, is still very much in business. McCarty's Bluff is about 1500 feet above Lookout Valley and has prevailing winds from the west, making it possible to fly almost every day.

Leaving the bluff, flying into the setting sun.

I had my Olympus OM cameras in those days, loaded with Kodak Ektachrome film. (This was several years before my switch to Fujichrome.) Although I had a full set of lenses, including the Olympus Zuiko 21mm f3.5 ultra-wide, which was used for the photograph at the top of this post, the hot lens of the day was the new Vivitar Series One 70-210mm f2.8 zoom. Now nearly forgotten, it was the first of the really good mid-range zoom lenses. A little heavy by today's standards, it was nonetheless a great lens and enabled me to get some shots I would not otherwise have been able to get. I had Olympus Power Winders attached to my cameras, which enabled me to shoot at one frame per second. Seems pathetic in these days of cameras that can shoot 10, 20, and more frames per second, but it was enough. Since these were the days before auto-focus, there was no point in shooting faster than I could focus.

Soaring like an eagle.

 Some of the time I was on the bluff photographing launches, and sometimes I was in the valley below photographing landings. On one occasion, I saw a glider launch from the mountain high above me. Just as he launched, the wind apparently failed and he went swooping straight down toward the trees. He managed to pull out just milli-seconds before destruction. When he landed, I saw something fall off his glider. I went over to see what it was. It was a freshly-broken, leafy twig!

Flying over the western slope of Lookout Mountain.

 In an interesting sidelight, one of the Australian glider pilots stayed on in Chattanooga, married a local girl, and became a professional photographer and one of my competitors!

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

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    Hang gliding     Olympus OMcameras     Olympus Zuiko lenses    Lookout Mountain     Lookout Mountain Flight Park     McCarty's Bluff     Kodak Ektachrome film     Vivitar Series One 70-210mm lens     World Hang Gliding Championships     Olympus Power Winders