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 

Back on My Soapbox

 Louise in our '66 Corvair Corsa, somewhere in the northeast Georgia mountains.

People who read this blog are familiar with my ongoing rant about backing up the files of your cell phone photographs.

Reader Marcus Peddle, who lives and teaches in South Korea, wrote in a comment: "I once asked a student if her parents had taken many pictures of her when she was young. 'Yes," she said, 'but my father broke his phone and all the pictures were lost.' What a disaster." 

Marcus blogs at  https://imperfect-composition.blogspot.com/

Because I prefer to use a camera that feels like a camera and has the features of something created expressly for photography, I don't take many pictures with my cell phone. But when I make a photo with my cell phone that's important to me, I back it up on my computer and back-up hard drives. 

I also back up the photos from my cameras, of course, and I do not reuse my SD cards. They are so cheap now that when I fill one up, I replace it with a new one and store the old card.

When Louise and I went on a memorable weekend trip to the northeast Georgia mountains back in 1971, cell phones were almost beyond imagination -- like something from a Dick Tracy comic strip.

But I did have a camera with me (as always) and took a few pictures. I wish I had taken more. This is the only survivor I've found, and it's important to me. The photo was originally square, so I probably made it with a Rolleicord Vb twin-lens reflex and cropped the image down to a rectangle because that's easier to post on Facebook. The picture doesn't have anything to do with today's topic, but since this is a photography blog, I feel an obligation to show you a photo. :o)

(The Corsa, by the way, was a really fun-to-drive car on mountain roads. A true poor man's Porsche)

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    film photography     cell phone photography    Corvair automoblile   northeast Georgia mountains    Nikon F camera     cell phones     Corvair Corsa

More from the Memory Bank

Rob, Louise, and Donny at Fall Creek Falls State Park (Tennessee), 1969.

We spent much of the summer of 1969 camping in Tennessee, including two memorable weeks at Fall Creek Falls State Park. We went swimming in the park's natural swimming holes every day and ate fish that Rob and I caught in a stream near our campground. Our very comfortable home for the outing was our little Ted Williams camper. 

Our paycheck from the private school where we taught in Miami was late, so we were living on a shoestring. But we had a great time. And made pictures that still bring a glow to my heart.

I don't remember what I used for a camera at Fall Creek Falls, but the pictures are square, so I apparently used some kind of twin-lens reflex, probably a Yashica. I shot only two rolls of Kodak's Kodacolor-X color negative film those two weeks (on a shoestring, as I said), but from those 24 exposures I got at least thirteen keepers. I'm happy with that.

Louise under the waterfall (Cane Creek Falls).

I still have the prints, but I've also scanned them and stored them in my computer. I'm deeply grateful for all the deposits my cameras have made in my memory bank over the years.

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    film photography     color negative film    camping   Ted Williams camper     Yashica camera     Kodacolor X film     Fall Creek Falls State Park     Kodak

Making Memories with a Cheap, Old, Rangefinder Camera

Louise and Donny at Bahia Honda State Park, Florida, May, 1969.

 

Photography has many functions. I made a living with my cameras for many years, and that was a truly important function. But for me, and probably for most of us, the camera's most important function is to serve as a memory-making machine.

In May, 1969, near the end of our first year teaching at Miami's Florida Christian School, Louise and I took the graduating seniors on an overnight outing to Bahia Honda State Park in the Keys. (We were class sponsors.)

Louise, Rob, 11-month-old Donny, and I had our little Ted Williams pop-up camper (I wrote about it here), while the students had tents and sleeping bags. As the saying goes, "A great time was had by all."

 The camera I took with me on that trip  was a Petri rangefinder with an f2.8 lens, very similar to this one. It was not new when I bought it, and I didn't pay much for it. But I made a lot of pictures with that camera, almost all of them on color negative (print) film. The prints are not the sharpest, but the memories they bring back are sharp indeed. I still have most of those prints, and I've also scanned them with an Epson Perfection 4990 flatbed scanner and stored them in my computer. Best of both worlds!

I simply can't overemphasize the importance of making prints and backing up your photos in your computer. Many of my readers, if not most, are making family snapshots with their cell phones. And that's great! Cell phone photography is quick, convenient, and entirely suitable for family snaps. But they also can vanish into the ether very easily if we don't take care to back them up. So choose the ones that mean most to you and email them off to Shutterfly or some other printing service. It's quick, easy, and cheap. You will never regret it.

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    film photography     color negative film    camping   Ted Williams camper     Florida keys     Petri f2.8 rangefinder camera     cell phone photography     Bahia Honda State State Park     Shutterfly

Would I Go Back to Shooting Film?

 Some of my film cameras.

 

 Probably not. But if I were to go back to shooting film, some of the reasons are in the picture above. Clockwise from the top they are the Minolta Autocord twin-lens reflex, the Canon EOS A2, the Petri f1.9 RF, the Minolta Flashmeter III, the Olympus OM2n, and the Canon Pellix FT. In the center is the Canon AF35ML. The key piece of equipment here is the Minolta Flashmeter. It reads the light falling on the subject rather than the light reflected from it, and gives super-accurate exposure readings with any camera and under all conditions.

Digital cameras have reached a state of near-perfection.They are superbly accurate in focusing and exposing, and advance quietly to the next frame with no effort on the users part. They cost little or nothing to operate after the initial investment in camera and lens(es). So what's not to like?

Film cameras, on the other hand, require much more attention from their users. Later models, like the Canon A2, often have auto exposure, focus, and film advance, but even these conveniences need some monitoring. They have not reached the state of perfection achieved by modern digital cameras, because development of film cameras was mostly sidelined 25 years ago as digital imaging took the world of photography by storm and blew film cameras into the weeds. (To mix a few metaphors.)

So why would anyone use a film camera today? Especially with the current prices of film and developing?

For me, anyway, the difficulty is the attraction. With film, one has to really learn one's camera, film, and accompanying processes. No shortcuts here.

A few days ago I pulled a Petri f1.9 rangefinder camera from the 1960s  out of a box in my study and fondled it for a few minutes as I remembered the fun I had and the pictures I made with a similar camera 55 years ago. I just don't get the satisfaction from my lovely Fuji digital cameras that I got from those antiquated film devices. Shooting film was simply more fun.

So, am I going back to film? Probably not. I have too many things I want to do and not enough life left to do them all as it is. But I will always miss my film-shooting days. They were the best part of my life in photography.

Just call it an old man's rant. 

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    film photography     film cameras    Minolta Flashmeter III    Minolta Autocord twin-lens reflex     Canon EOS A2     Petri f1.9     Olympus OM2n     Canon Pelix FT     Canon AF35ML

Footloose in Seoul with a Pentax 6x7

 Young couple on a bridge, Seoul, South Korea.

It was Sunday, February 16, 1992 in Seoul, South Korea. My editor, Doug LeBlanc, had gone back to the U.S. because of a family emergency. I was alone and had most of the day off. What to do, what to do, what to do? I know! I'll take my Pentax 6x7 and a pocket full of film and ramble around the city!

I must have been in some kind of park. There was a tightrope walker. . .

 

He was really good, even doing acrobatics on the wire.

Two women shared a seesaw.

Several young women were decorating pottery. . .

 

While a craftsman worked on something. I couldn't tell what he was doing.

 

A Korean beauty in traditional dress.

A convivial group of young adults were having tea in an outdoor restaurant.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was not sure why I brought Kodak Ektachrome EPP film instead of Fujichrome 100 on this trip. Apparently the EPP was in 220 size rolls, which gave me 20 exposures per roll instead of 10. A roll of either takes the same amount of space, but the 220 has twice as many frames.

This is a photo from yesterday's post. Marcus Peddle, a reader who lives in South Korea, commented: "The newlyweds are praying at what looks to be a village sacred tree. Many villages have them. Judging by the rope and strips of white cloth wrapped around the the two phallic stones on the left, I would say they are praying to have a son."

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 1992-2025 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     Ektachrome EPP film    Fujichrome 100D film     travel photography     Seoul    Pentax 6x7 camera     South Korea     South Korean culture     Kodak

The Pentax 6x7 in South Korea

The Farmer's Dance is a traditional ceremony performed at planting and harvest seasons. These days it is performed mostly at festivals.

 A Camera with Soul in Seoul. 

 In 1992, I received an assignment from Compassion International, a Christian relief agency, to document some of its work in India and South Korea.

Like the somewhat better known World Vision, Compassion has a sponsorship ministry that enables people in the U.S. and other first world countries to sponsor disadvantaged children and young people in other countries. 

With me on the trip was Douglas LeBlanc, the editor of Compassion Magazine. My job was to make photographs to accompany the articles he would write. Doug turned out to be a very good travel companion and we have remained friends, even though we haven't seen each other for years. We keep in touch by email from time to time and he  comments occasionally on this blog. 

I carried a kit of two Olympus OM cameras and four lenses, all Olympus Zuikos: the 24mm f2.8, 35mm f2, 85mm f2, and the 180mm f2.8. No zooms on this trip. Plus about 110 rolls of Fujichrome 100D film.

A newly-wed couple at a Buddhist shrine seeking a blessing on their marriage.

Being young (just a 55-year-old kid), strong, and stupid, I also packed a separate case with a big Pentax 6x7 and a bunch of 120 Kodak Ektachrome EPP film. I don't remember why I didn't use Fujichrome -- maybe I got a better price on the Kodak. Also, there wasn't any good reason for carrying two separate systems -- it was just something I wanted to do, was able to do (young, strong, and stupid, remember), so I did it.

The bulk of my work on this trip was done with the Olympus equipment. I used the Pentax some in India, not a lot, but it was in South Korea where the big gun came into its own.

I described the Pentax as a camera with soul, and I have to say that if I ever owned a camera with soul, it was the Pentax 6x7. Big, heavy, loud, and totally reliable, it had plenty of personality. And it also gave me the highest percentage of keepers of any camera I've ever used. Of course, with only ten shots per roll of (expensive) 120 film, I was very careful with my focus and exposure. 

Shortly after arriving in Seoul, Doug received a call from his wife. His father was seriously ill, and it was necessary for him to return home immediately.

After several days of being taken in and around Seoul by the Compassion staff to make photographs and gather information for Doug's articles, I had an afternoon off which I used to make some pictures on my own. There was some kind of festival going on, so it was a target-rich environment.

Another Farmer's Dance scene.

More to come in my next post. All photos, of course, were made with a Pentax 6x7 camera, a 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens, and Kodak Ektachrome EPP 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 1992-2025 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     Ektachrome EPP film    Fujichrome 100D film     travel photography     Seoul    Pentax 6x7 camera     Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens     South Korea     Farmer's Dance     Kodak

The Jenkins Family Goes Camping

 

 Loading our first camper for one of our first camping trips.

(Click on any picture to see an enlarged version.)

This slide was made on an inferior film (probably Ferannia, sold by 3M). It is not very sharp. The colors were faded and washed out, but some work in Photoshop fixed that. Whatever its photographic faults may be, the picture is absolutely precious to us. 

The year was 1969. The scene was our home in Miami. We were loading our first camper for one of our first camping trips. 

Eight-year-old Rob, or Robbie, as we called him then (he's a very distinguished college professor and author these days) is holding one-year-old Donny (now a successful businessman). Louise is packing things in the trunk of our 1963 Plymouth (a really good car).

Our camper was a Ted Williams model, sold by Sears. We bought ours used for about $400, as best I remember. It was small and light and easy to tow, but the top opened out to a big tent that was plenty roomy for us.

The body of the camper was accessed by two large doors, one on each side. In the compartment on one side I built a set of shelves to hold non-perishable foods and cooking utensils. On the other side, I placed a crib mattress and it became Donny's bed, as you can see below. We also had a chest-of-drawers, with drawers for clothes for each of us. When traveling, we simply slid the chest into the compartment (first removing Donny, of course) and closed the door.

Donny's bed/storage compartment in our Ted Williams camper.

 

Louise's "kitchen."  Camping on Lookout Mountain near Rock City.

 

We definitely got our money's worth out of our little Ted Williams camper, with trips to the Keys, the Everglades, Florida state parks, and more. In the summer of 1969 we spent a month camping on Lookout Mountain and two more weeks at Fall Creek Falls (Tennessee) State Park. When we moved to Tennessee in 1970 we lived in the camper until we found and bought a house.

 

I had only dimly remembered many of these scenes/events from the early years of our family. The pictures brought everything back. Carry your camera and use it. It's a memory-making machine.

 

I believe these photos from the spring/summer of 1969 were made with a Petri rangefinder camera with an f2.8 lens, my best 35mm camera at the time. That fall, I was able to upgrade to a Nikon F.  However, I did use the Petri to make the first picture I ever sold. But that's another story.

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    film photography     3M Ferrania film    camping   Ted Williams camper     Nikon F camera     Petri f2.8 rangefinder camera     Lookout Mountain     Rock City     Fall Creek Falls State Park

More about Film: Black & White

 The Dreamer: First Presbyterian Sunday School, Chattanooga.

Some ramblings about black and white films.

Over the course of 35 years as a film shooter, I used a great many black and white emulsions. Kodak's Plus-X and Tri-X, of course, and some Pan-F.  I shot a lot of Tri-X. Didn't everybody? But it was never my favorite film. Too much grain, unless I shot it at 200 and reduced the developing time. Might as well shoot Plus-X to begin with. 

Between Tri-X and Ilford's HP-5+, I preferred the Ilford. I also used Ilford's FP-4 and liked it, as I did Ilford's chromogenic films XP-1 and XP-2 for their ease of use and smooth rendition. However, I preferred films I could process myself.

In my early days in photography I was hooked on the style of unobtrusive observer/available light photography popularized by such workers as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt in the photo magazines of the day. Consequently, I was always trying for all the film speed possible. I pushed my films by rating them above the factory recommended speed and extending the development time. I also tried HP-5 and Tri-X in a number of developers, such as Diafine, Acufine, and Acu-1, which promised enhanced film speeds. Nothing worked to my satisfaction, because with speed, you get grain. And I don't much like grain. 

Also, I never used Agfa's Rodinal developer, which seems to still be popular more than 100 years after its invention, because again, I don't like grain. YMMV.

After some years, I gave up on the speed race and mostly shot fast films in medium format cameras, where the grain didn't show as much. I also learned to light, which helped a great deal.

Later in my film-shooting days, I settled on Kodak's T-Max 400 film for 35mm use because of its good speed, excellent sharpness, and unobtrusive grain structure. 

I used the very popular Kodak D-76 film developer for many years, mixing a gallon at a time and storing it in a brown glass bottle in my darkroom. Eventually, I noticed that my developed negatives were becoming denser when shot at the same film speeds. What I found is that D-76 gains strength over time when mixed in large quantities and stored. The solution: mix smaller quantities as needed (inconvenient, as D-76 is a powder, not a liquid); or change developers. 

I changed to T-Max developer, which is a liquid and can be mixed in small quantities I found the quality of T-Max-processed negatives to be as good as those processed in D-76, so I stayed with it until the end of my days in film.

We had so many things to choose from and so many different ways to do things. Photography is simpler these days and not nearly as much fun.

 

Three church leaders in my studio: First Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga.

The black and white photos in this post are from scanned prints. The negatives are in storage and would take some excavation to find, so I can't say for certain what films were used. I do kinda think, however, that the photo at the top may have been made on Ilford's XP1 chromogenic film. The camera for both photos was probably the Canon EOS A2.

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    film photography     film processing    Kodak Plus-X film    black and white film     Kodak Tri-X film     Kodak Pam-F film     Kodak D-76 developer     Ilford HP-5+ film     Ilford FP-4 film     Ilford XP-1 film     Ilford XP-2 film     Kodak T-Max 400 film     Canon EOS A2 camera     Kodak T-Max developer     Agfa Rodinal developer