Blue and Gold
Chickamauga Creek near its source in McLemore Cove,
Walker County, Georgia.
Pentax 6x7, 105mm f2.5 Takumar lens, Fujichrome 100 film
(This a repost from October 22, 2021.)
The best of all months is October.
Some may prefer April or May, and I like them too, but I love October. The summer heat has broken so the nights are cool, but the days are mostly warm and since it doesn’t usually rain much the skies are clear almost every day.
October light is the most beautiful because the air is so clear that the long, slanting rays of the southward-moving sun illuminate everything in their paths with a special brilliance while casting everything else in deep shadow. Fall color usually peaks right around the last week of October in the North Georgia mountains. Leaf colors are softer than they are farther north, but no less beautiful.
October is the month for the first frost, for arts and crafts fairs, for a briskness in the air that makes you glad to be alive, and for taking someone you love for a long walk to look at the leaves.
(Text and photograph from my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.)
Chickamauga Creek flows from south to north, through the village of Chickamauga and Chickamauga Battlefield, to both of which it lends its name. The creek, in turn, takes its name from the Chickamaugas, a sub-tribe of the Cherokees.
The Pentax 6x7, with its 2-1/4 x 2-3/4 film format, was regarded by many as the premier medium format field camera. I worked with one for many years and believe to this day that I got my highest percentage of "keepers" from the Pentax. Yet, when I got my first digital SLR, a Canon 10d with only a six megapixel sensor, I did some tests and found that the 10D made 16x20 prints that were indistinguishable from prints from the Pentax.
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
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Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/
Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
My favourite month as well, for most of the same reasons. Frankly, any season is good if it's not a miserable Korean summer . . .
ReplyDeleteAlthough the digital camera did as well as the medium format Pentax for printing, did you miss the colours and tones of film at all? Digital can be too accurate and clean for my tastes sometimes, but I've started using my Fujifilm X-T4 again and I like the look. Even if the autofocus drives me a bit bonkers sometimes.
Thanks for the comment, Marcus. I've made the transition to your new web site. I was thinking about moving to Wordpress, but maybe I won't.
DeleteI've only been to Korea once, in 1992. I think it was spring. Weather was nice.
Thank you for bookmarking the new blog. Korea in spring is nice. All the new growth is a beautiful shade of light green.
DeleteSorry. I missed part of your comment. The photos were so identical at 16x20 that even the lab man who made the prints shook his head. Only one of the many people who saw them was able to tell which was which. She spotted the difference in depth of field.
ReplyDeleteVery impressive.
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