Sixty Years! (and Counting)

August 21, 1965. Off to see the world in our '59 Volkswagen.

We made it! Sixty years! Today is our sixtieth anniversary. What a trip it has been! From our wedding in Tallahassee to Miami, to Chattanooga, to 33 years on a small farm in North Georgia's McLemore Cove, to two years in a fifth-wheel travel trailer, and now to Knoxville. It has been the adventure of a lifetime. As Louise once said when I asked her why she married me, "One reason was because I thought it would be an adventure."

I have been blessed beyond measure to have shared my life with this exceptional, deeply intelligent, multi-talented woman, who has an invincible spirit and a work ethic that puts me to shame.

Not that it's been all lollipops and roses. We have had our share of hard times and times when it appeared that the thread that held us together was in danger of breaking. But we were held together by the grace of God, by our commitment to him, to each other, and to our marriage. 

We call our dog Max "the dog that saved our marriage." In the early '90s when we were building our house, there were the usual disagreements about where to spend and where to cut costs. In the midst of that, our builder went bankrupt with 82 percent of our money. The house was not 82 percent complete. There was so much anger that we could hardly speak to each other. It was "Max, tell your mother. . ."  "Max, tell your father. . ." 

But by God's grace we survived, and lived happily in that house for 26 years. I asked Louise this morning what she felt was the reason our marriage had endured. She answered quickly "Commitment." And so it was. 

If I could offer a few words of advice, this is what I would say:

1. Build your marriage on God.

2. Always be courteous to each other.

For those who read my post about our family reunion/anniversary celebration in Indiana, I should explain that it was held in early August so that family members with children in school could attend. But our actual anniversary is today.

The beginning of something good.

Our wedding was held at the Thomasville Road Baptist Church in Tallahassee. It wasn't our church, but was borrowed because we were attending a start-up church that didn't yet have a building. We dashed down the steps in a shower of rice and headed off in our little blue Volkswagen to begin life's greatest adventure.

Here's something I wrote on the last page of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia, in a chapter about the north Georgia mountains:

"One of my most poignant memories is of the last day of our honeymoon. Louise and I had spent a week in the North Georgia mountains; the last several days in a small resort across from Vogel State Park. 

On this last day, we packed our Volkswagen and drove over the mountain to the fork at Turner's Corner. To the right, down U.S. 19, lay home, responsibility. . . life. I can still feel, even now, the powerful urging of my heart to choose the left fork and stay in the mountains forever. 

As Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." 

So I did. And life has been good."

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 2025 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:    marriage     north Georgia mountains    Old Volkswagens      Vogel State Park     marital advice

No Post Today. Come Back Tomorrow for a Special Post.

Sunrise in McLemore Cove.

Meanwhile, here's a picture I hope you'll like.

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 2016-2025 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

 

If It Looks Good, Shoot It!

 

Nurse at Crawford W. Long Hospital, Atlanta

(Now Emory University Hospital Midtown)

Canon EOS 10D, 28-70 f2.8L lens

(Adapted from a post from February, 2020.)

In 1972, I was hired as an intern/assistant/general dogsbody at a small, strictly non-Hollywood film production company in Chattanooga. We made what were called in those days “industrial” movies (basically short films made to promote and/or sell a product). We also made many training filmstrips, mostly for the fast-food industry. (For the younger set, I should explain that a filmstrip is a series of still photographs arranged in a story-telling sequence on a single strip of film with a recorded narration and shown by means of a special projector.)

I had been involved with photography since 1968, and was eagerly looking for a way to make a career out of it.

My first out-of-the studio assignment was to go along as a helper on a shoot for some audio-visual training filmstrips for the Arby’s Roast Beef restaurant chain. We went to a brand new store in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where everything was still sparkling new and clean.

As I said, my company was by no means a large operation. Usually, a two-man team was sent out on jobs like this: a director, who was also in many cases the script writer, and a photographer. I was just along to help out and to gain experience. 

Our lighting setup for this kind of work usually consisted of three 1000-watt daylight blue tungsten floodlight bulbs in 18-inch reflectors which we called “scoops.” I was salivating with anticipation, because this was finally my chance to learn all about lighting ratios and exotic stuff like that.  

We set up the lights at the work area and the photographer moved them around a bit. He turned to the director and said, “That look okay to you?” The director said, “Looks good to me. Shoot it.”  

And thereby I learned the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned about photography: photography is all about how things look. If it looks good, it is good. Shoot it! 

 (And then, if you can, find a different angle and shoot it again. It may look even better.)

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 2016-2025 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 digital camera     Canon 28-70mm f2.8L lens     Arby's Roast Beef Restaurants   commercial photography     audio-visual training films

The Backroads Traveler: Two Historic Churches in Hancock County, Georgia

Powelton Methodist Church.

I found Hancock County to be one of the most interesting places in Georgia. It has an historic courthouse, old mills, some really old houses, and an unusually large number of ancient churches. 

On Georgia Highway 22, about 15 miles northeast of Sparta, the county seat, is the sleepy village of Powelton, one of the oldest villages in Georgia and a very important town in post-Revolutionary War days.  

Powelton Methodist Church was built in 1830, although the congregation was organized long before that. The building has not been maintained recently and looks every one of its 190-plus years, although it appears to still be structurally sound. Some readers may recognize this as the church on the cover of the book Historic Rural Churches of Georgia.

Mount Zion Presbyterian Church.

About six or seven miles north of Sparta on Georgia 15 is the Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church. Built in 1814 at a cost of $700, the Greek Revival-style structure is all that remains of a once-thriving community with an academy that was one of Georgia’s most celebrated institutions. Famous educators and writers were associated with Mt. Zion, which is said to have narrowly lost to Athens as the location for the University of Georgia. 

I visited and photographed both churches on August 17, 2016. For the Powelton church I used an Olympus E-M5 camera with a Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens. The Mt. Zion church was photographed with a Canon EOS 6D and the Canon EF 28-105mm lens.

Adapted from my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

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 $4.95 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 2025 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 photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 12-32mm lens       Canon EOS 6D camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens     Historic churches     Hancock County, Georgia     Sparta, Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Two Old Georgia Mills

 The Arrington Mill, McDuffie County

Here are two old mills that I think are especially beautiful. I discovered them both while working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

On an obscure backroad south of Thomson in McDuffie County in the east central part of the state sits the Arrington Mill, built on Fort Creek around 1920. The beauty and peacefulness of the scene are palpable.

Powered by an underwater turbine, which appears to be gone now, the mill, like many other small Georgia mills, most likely ground grain for local farmers. I visited and photographed the mill on July 14, 2016.

Perdue's Mill, Habersham County.

About four miles from Clarkesville in northeast Georgia is Perdue's Mill on Perdue Mill Road (sometimes called Pardue). Built in the 1930s on Perdue Mill Creek, it was in operation until the mid-1960s. The mill was powered by an 18-foot overshot wheel, which is now gone. The water came, not from the waterfall which is seen in the photo, but from a mill dam and pond above the cascade. 

I visited and photographed Perdue's Mill on October 27, 2016.

Vines on the wall of Perdue's Mill. I have been told they are Virginia Creeper, but I'm not enough of a botanist to verify that.

Each of these mills is beautiful in its own way. The Arrington Mill has an atmosphere of peacefulness; Perdue's Mill is a scene of raw, wild beauty.

The Arrington mill was photographed with an Olympus E-M5 camera and a Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens; the Perdue mill with a Canon EOS 6D and a Canon EF 28-105mm 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 $4.95 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 2025 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 photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 14-140mm lens       Canon EOS 6D camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens     old mills     McDuffie County, Georgia     Habersham County, Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Bethel Brick Church

 The 1827 Bethel Brick Methodist Church, Screven County, Georgia.

 

At the northern end of Screven County,  near the South Carolina line and several miles north of U.S. Highway 301, on a road called the Oglethorpe Trail, lies the Bethel Brick Methodist Church, constructed by slave labor in 1827.  In 1859, just before the Civil War, the church had 150 white parishioners and 418 black members. The church has been in continuous use in all the years since its founding and is still in excellent condition. It is both the oldest Methodist church and the oldest church building in Screven County.

 

Louise and I visited the church on July 25, 2016, as I was working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia. It was a very hot day, and she and our little dog Georgia stayed in the car with the air conditioner running while I made photographs.

Although I found the church to be of interest, I eventually decided not to include it in my tour of the northern end of coastal Georgia because it was an outlier, too far from the other points of interest on the tour, which covered an area from just north of Savannah to Tybee Island and south nearly to Darien.

The photograph was made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera fitted with a Panasonic Lumix Vario G 12-32mm 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 $4.95 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 2025 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 photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 12-32mm lens       Screven County, Georgia    Bethel Brick Methodist Church     Historic churches     Coastal Georgia   Savannah

Why Do I Blog?

 Cloudfall over the escarpment of Lookout Mountain. McLemore Cove, Walker County, GA

My posts have been irregular this week, for which I apologize. As it says in the footnotes, I post Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, unless life gets in the way. So this week, life got in the way. We came back kinda tired from our anniversary/reunion trip to Indiana last week, and I've been having difficulty thinking of things to write about.

Blogging is a lot of trouble. It's a constant struggle to find new and interesting things to write about, and then, when I write a blog and post it, I have to find something else to write about next time. It's like having a baby, and then waking up pregnant the next morning.

So why do I do it? I do it because I love my pictures. I want them to live. And the only way any kind of art can have life is to be out there -- to be seen. I'm certainly not saying my photographs are great art, but I believe they deserve to live. To be seen. Otherwise, why make them at all? So I blog.

Like the picture at the top. Not great art, but lovely in its own way. It deserves to be seen.

If I kept any notes on this photo I don't know where they are. Best guess? Canon EOS A2 with the Canon 80-200 f2.8 L "Magic Drainpipe" lens and Fujichrome 100D film. 

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 $4.95 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 2020-2025 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 photography     barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 80-2000 f2.8L lens      Fujichrome 100D film    film photography     "Magic Drainpipe"     blogging

Celebrating Our 60th Anniversary at Spring Mill

 Louise and me, with two sons, two daughters-in-law, two granddaughters, one grandson-in-law, five great grandchildren, and one dog (Georgia).

 Over the weekend Louise and I traveled to Southern Indiana to celebrate our 60th anniversary as part of a Jenkins Family Reunion, which, as always, was held at Spring Mill State Park near Mitchell.

I'm grateful to God for the years he has given Louise and me. We have been blessed with a fine family and an interesting and eventful life together. Sixty years is just a good start. I'm hoping for many more. 

I've written quite a bit about my life with Louise. Here's something I wrote about her on her 80th birthday.

The 1817 Hamer Mill at Spring Mill State Park.

Spring Mill State Park has been a constant in my life. My parents took me there as a baby. My first memory of the place is of an elementary school outing there when I was eight. Throughout my growing-up years, Spring Mill was where we went on picnics, school outings, Sunday School parties, etc. When we began having family reunions in the mid-80s, Spring Mill was the logical place to go, culminating in the celebration of my parents' 65th anniversary in 1999, an occasion for which every living member of the family, 90 or so people, was in attendance.

Dad died in 2000, at the age of 90, and reunions became somewhat more sporadic after that. We had a large group in 2022, and although the turnout for our anniversary was not as large, it was still a good group and a wonderful experience.

Read more about Spring Mill State Park and the Pioneer Village here.

Both photos: Fuji X-T3 camera, Fujinon 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 1999-2025 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     Indiana     Spring Mill State Park    Family portraits     digital photography     Fuji X-T3 digital camera     Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens     family reunions

The Assignment of a Lifetime: Part Two

 Horse Laugh. U.S. Hwy. 11, McMinn County, Tennessee.

 

Reposted from December, 2019, with additions.

Sorting Rock City's old file cards by states and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary for my first trip and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994. Over the next 18 months, stealing time whenever my studio schedule allowed, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites in 15 Southeastern and Midwestern states. Nearly 250 barns were found in 14 states, with only Michigan proving barren.

With 35-year-old, often sketchy records and occasional hearsay reports as my only sources of information, finding the sites was an endlessly fascinating piece of detective work. Barns have burned, blown down, been bulldozed for highway construction and subdivisions, or simply fallen from disuse and disrepair. Many of the largest and finest are gone. To complicate things still further, highways have been changed, re-routed, and re-named.

Often, the only way to locate a site was to find someone who remembered the property owner:

"Do you remember so-and-so, who had a place out on Highway 11 south of here?"

"Oh, yeah, knew him well. He and my daddy used to go fishin' together all the time. Good ol' feller. He's dead now."

"Well, he had this barn on his farm, with a sign that said 'See Rock City.' Here's an old picture of it."

"Sure, I remember that ol' barn. Fact is, I helped him take it down, back around 1975. It had got all rotten and falling down, y'know. Weren't safe."

I also learned to take the information I was given with a grain of salt. The people most familiar with an area are often the least observant. In Robbinsville, North Carolina I asked a gas station attendant about a barn. "Oh, sure," he said, "It was just down the road here, about a half mile. But it's been torn down." Checking for myself, I found his directions to the site were perfect. But not only was the barn still standing, it had just been repainted and was one of the rare barns with "See Rock City" signs on both sides!

In those pre-digital days, of course, everything was photographed on film, mostly Fujichrome 100. I began the project with a pair of Canon EOS-10S bodies and one EOS-RT and gradually upgraded my equipment so that by the time I finished I was working with two Canon A2s and a 10S. Lenses carried were the 70-210mm f4, the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, the 50mm f1.8, the 35mm f2, and the 24mm f2.8, all Canon EF. Probably 90% of the photographs were made with the 24 and the 28-105. Exposures were almost always read with a Minolta Flashmeter III in incident mode. Color filters were used frequently to render scenes the way I felt them.

Each barn was also photographed in black and white, using a variety of systems and films according to my mood.  Sometimes I used Ilford's Delta 400 in one of the EOS bodies, at other times Ilford HP-5+ in a Mamiya RB or Pentax 6x7.  I also experimented with Agfa 400 in both the 35mm and 120 sizes.  All worked pretty well, and I can't say I really have a preference.  The developer used throughout was T-Max.  

An average day of photography might involve driving more than 450 miles in 12 to 15 hours, and result in locating eight or ten sites, of which three to five might have barns. Some days were better than that, of course, and some were much worse. I spent a total of about 75 days on the assignment, capturing images in winter snow, summer haze, the soft light of spring and the clear light of autumn. Working the sweet early and late light in midsummer meant 18-hour days and not much sleep.

I began the project with some idealism, I suppose. Expecting to find prosperous, story-book farmyards, I often found depressing scenes of rural desolation. Most of the barns were far from any farmhouse. Many were dilapidated, some were overgrown with brush. I learned to take whatever each situation gave me and tried to use that to make a photograph which expressed the spirit of the place

What began as the assignment of a lifetime grew into a labor of love as I came to treasure the dignity and individuality of each old barn. I learned to see beauty even in the isolation in which so many of them are ending their days. I learned that they wanted to be photographed in a direct, documentary way, without artifice. They seemed to say, "Here we are. This is the way we are. Please let us speak for ourselves."

Adapted from an article in Rangefinder magazine,May, 1999.

(Canon EOS 10S. 24mm f2.8 Canon EF lens. Fujichrome 100 film.)

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 $4.95 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 2020-2025 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 photography     Rock City Gardens    See Rock City      coffee-table books    creating books    Rock City barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 24mm EF lens      Fujichrome 100D film    Clark Byers     barns     film photography     Canon EOS 10S camera     Minolta Flashmeter III     filters     1987 Chevy Blazer     black and white film photography

The Assignment of a Lifetime: Part I

 U.S. Highway165, Morehouse Parrish, Louisiana.

 

Reposted from December, 2019.

In Indiana, a black cat wound itself around the legs of an old farmer and looked up at me, eyes gleaming in the early light.  In Louisiana, a yellow locomotive emerged from behind a barn just at the right time, under just the right kind of sky.  In Tennessee, a pony positioned himself in front of a barn, threw back his head, and gave me the horse laugh.  Serendipity, which by definition is capricious and unpredictable, became a welcome and almost expected companion as time and again I traveled all day under overcast skies which opened to bathe a barn in rays as I arrived, then closed again.  It was my dream project, the assignment of a lifetime.  And it began with three little words: "Let's do it!"

The man who spoke them was Bill Chapin, president of Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Behind the words, a lifetime dream: to create a book about the old barns whose painted message, "See Rock City" became one of the greatest outdoor advertising campaigns of all time.  They launched me on a project that was to occupy much of my time and effort for the next three years and affect my life and business profoundly.

 

It began with Bill's great-uncle, entrepreneur Garnet Carter, who laid out trails and swinging bridges through ten acres of massive rock formations on the cliffs of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga.  Hoping to regain his depression-lost fortune, he opened Rock City Gardens to the public in 1932, but unfortunately nobody much came.  Not until 1936 did things improve, when he hired an enterprising young sign painter named Clark Byers to travel the length and breadth of the land painting "See Rock City" on the roof or side of every barn whose owner would allow it.  So diligent and successful was he that as many as 900 barns in 19 states may have carried the Rock City slogan over the years, making it famous around the globe. 

 

The retirement of Byers in 1968, coupled with changing highway sign laws and the completion of the Interstate system brought about a drastic reduction in the barn painting program, as Rock City began to rely on other forms of advertising -- which ultimately brought me into the picture.  As a commercial photographer with a studio in Chattanooga, I began working for the attraction in the early '80s, photographing for brochures and other advertising.  In 1988, Bill told me of his long-held dream of a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

Although he decided not to proceed at that time, my interest was kindled.  I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still maintaining, and whenever my travels brought me near one I made a photograph of it if possible.  In 1994, after learning that the barns being maintained by Rock City had dwindled to 85, I went back to Chapin with my photos and told him that if he wanted to do a book, this was the time.

He didn't say much.  Just looked at the pictures for about 15 minutes, asked a few questions, then said the magic words: "Let's do it!"

 

       

A few days later I received a box containing hundreds of old file cards, the only record of most barn locations.  On each card was the name of the last known property owner, the highway route number, and the distance from the nearest town.  Many had a small photo attached, apparently taken about 1960; but some had only rough sketches of the barns.  Inside each card was a record of rents paid (usually $3 to $5 per year) and repaint dates.  Rock City had had no contact with most of the barns since the late '60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see. 

 

So I went.

 

Adapted from an article in Rangefinder magazine,May, 1999.

(Canon EOS-A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100D film.) 

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 $4.95 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 2020-2025 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 photography     Rock City Gardens    See Rock City      coffee-table books    creating books    Rock City barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 28-105 EF lens      Fujichrome 100D film    Clark Byers     barns     film photography

My Most Significant Accomplishment

 

Rock City Barns: A Passing Era. The book that changed my life.

My career as a photographer began in 1969 in a very modest way, photographing sports and activities at the private school where I was a teacher and selling prints to the students and their families.

I soon left teaching and began trying to get established in professional photography. For several years I worked in advertising and for a studio that made training films, finally opening my own business on January 1, 1978.

In 1982 I began doing advertising and public relations photography for Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their principal, and very successful, advertising thrust was painting "See Rock City" on barns all over the southeast.

 In 1988, Bill Chapin, then president of See Rock City, Inc., told me about his dream to create a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost. That was the beginning of a process that ended in the publication of a coffee-table book that sold more than 29,000 copies and altered the course of my life.

I've been blessed with a long and interesting (to me, anyway) career, but this was the peak -- my most significant accomplishment. The Rock City Barns book went on to win many honors and awards, including the 1997 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award in the highly competitive Arts category, which includes books about art, music, and photography.  Sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association, the award was presented at a banquet in Chicago during the American Booksellers Association national convention.  The book also won a Silver Medal in the Travel/Essay category.

Here are some of the comments from reviewers:

"In 'exquisite' photographs and 'warm and gentle' text, Mr. Jenkins captures not only the spirit of the barns, but also the spirit of an era.  'Rock City Barns is a remarkable contribution to the folk culture of this country.' Anyone who remembers the days of two-lane highway travel will find it hard to put down. Nostalgia may not be what it used to be, but these photographs show us that sometimes the past can be even better than we remembered."

In the next two posts, I will retell the story of how the book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era came into being.

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 $4.95 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 2020-2025 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 photography     Rock City Gardens    See Rock City      coffee-table books    creating books    Rock City barns

Breakfast at Susie's

 

 Breakfast at Susie's Sunset Cafe, LaFayette, Georgia.

Blog Note: This is one of my favorite pictures and one of my favorite blog texts. Reposted from December, 2020.

The name of Susie’s Café on the square in beautiful downtown LaFayette, Georgia was officially Susie’s Sunset Café. But I always thought it should have been named Susie’s Sunrise Café, because the early morning sun streamed in through the plate-glass front windows and illuminated everything all the way to the back wall.

Susie’s had booths down each side for those who preferred a feeling of relative privacy, but it also had a couple of long tables down the center where lawyers, businessmen, farmers, factory workers, and gas station attendants ate their breakfasts together and chewed the fat (no reflection on the bacon or sausage) in amiable equality. 

Susie's has been gone for several years now, replaced by a Japanese restaurant, and LaFayette is the poorer for its loss. Places like Susie's are the heart and soul of country towns. 

On a technical note, the photograph was made with an Olympus SPn rangefinder camera with a non-interchangeable 40mm lens on Fuji color negative film. 

I had noticed the potential for this picture sometime previously, but it took more than one attempt to get myself seated in the best position with the most interesting combination of people in place. No one noticed me as I made a few exposures with my small camera from a booth to one side.

(Photograph and text adapted from my limited-edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait

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 $4.95 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 2020-2025 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     LaFayette, Georgia    restaurants      Olympus SPn camera    Fuji color negative film     rangefinder cameras

After More than 100 Years George Eastman's Dream Comes True

 My backyard tree ornaments. Photographed with a 12-megapixel iPhone 6s.

I received a comment recently from a long-time friend who was bemoaning the complexity of digital cameras. I told him that one of the reasons for the popularity of cell phone cameras is that all you have to know is which way to point them and when to push the button. 

The camera in a cell phone is the fulfillment of George Eastman's dream. In 1880, he founded the Eastman Kodak Company, and in 1888, brought to market a revolutionary camera -- just a box with a lens, a shutter, and a winding crank, loaded with enough film for 100 pictures. When the user reached the end of the roll, he simply sent the camera to Kodak's processing laboratory and in due time received his pictures -- and his camera; loaded with a fresh roll of film for another 100 photos. From this came Kodak's slogan: You push the button. We do the rest.

One hundred and eleven years after Eastman launched his camera, the first cell phone with a camera appeared on the market: the 0.3 megapixel Kyocera VP-210, the first phone with a built-in camera. It wasn't very good, but the technology has advanced rapidly, and now, in the mid-2020s we have compact marvels with multiple lenses in different focal lengths and 48 megapixel sensors that are capable of very fine, even professional-level work. And some professionals are using them for much, even all of their work.

Three grandmas and a baby. Walmart, 2020. iPhone 6S.

I have a semi-professional photographer friend who does excellent work with a late-model iPhone with three, built-in lenses. Although he has a conventional camera with long lenses for bird and wildlife photography, he prefers to use his iPhone for most other work.

Is this the future of photography? For the vast majority of people, I think it probably is. But there will always be people like me, who enjoy using a traditional camera and the extra capability that goes with it. But, like my picture of the grandmas with a baby in Walmart, a cell-phone-with-camera is a handy thing to have along when you don't have your real 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 $4.95 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 2025 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   cell phone photography     cell phones    George Eastman     Kodak     Kyocera VP-210