Taking a Break

 Clearing Storm over Lookout Mountain.

I'm taking a break. Several days, maybe as much as a week. Meanwhile, I'm posting one of my favorite pictures for you to look at while I'm gone.

As you may have noticed, I've been somewhat sporadic lately.

As I say in the fine print at the bottom of every post "I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way." And right now, life is in the way. I have some things going on that make it difficult to give sufficient attention to my blog. Louise has a broken arm (she fell while walking the dog) and is also in the grip of severe and painful back spasms, so I have been nurse, cook, and housekeeper. We have an appointment with a neurosurgeon on Thursday. I hope we can find out what is going on. 

Also, as a result of a fall I had in August, 2024, (read about it  here) I have my own back problems that hinder my walking. I can walk, but it isn't much fun. I use a cane, and having one more thing in my hands is one thing too many. So I don't carry a camera with me at all times as I have done since 1968.

I hope to be back soon.

The photo: This was made in the '90s with a Canon EOS A2 camera and the wonderful Canon EF 80-200mm f2.8L lens -- the first version, known as "the Magic Drainpipe." The film, as usual, was Fujichrome 100.

See my October 3rd post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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     Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 80-200mmf2.8L lens    Fujichrome 100 film     Georgia     Lookout Mountain     "Magic Drainpipe"  Life

The Informal Portrait

 

Man with hat, Dayton, Tennessee
 

Making photographs of the historic courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, site of the famous Scopes Trial of 1925, I chanced to meet this jaunty looking older gentleman and asked if it would be okay to photograph him. He seemed happy to oblige, so I made a few exposures, probably with a Canon EOS 10s and the 70-210 f4 Canon EF lens.

Making informal portraits has long been one of my favorite things to do with a camera. I've photographed friends, family members, and total strangers whose faces interested me. It's easy to do, and you don't need to carry a massive load of equipment. One camera body and one lens are all you need, although that lens should be on the longish side (85 to 105mm) for my taste. Personally, I like the 16-80mm (24-120mm equivalent) zoom on my Fuji X-system cameras, but your mileage may vary, as they say. I've made some portraits I like with a 35mm lens, but nothing wider.

Some photographers like to use wide apertures to render a very narrow depth of field, but I've never cared for that effect. I like to use an aperture of f5.6 or f8 to give enough depth to keep both nose and ears in focus.

My brother, Steve, in better days.

Actually, the technical side of making informal portraits is pretty simple. Practice with friends and family until you feel comfortable and have made some portraits you're pleased with. 

Photographing strangers, however, can be a bit intimidating if you let it affect you. It's easy to make good photos of people when they are occupied with something else, and they may not even notice you or care that you're there. The part most people have trouble with is approaching a stranger and asking if you could make their photograph. Sometimes I ask, and sometimes I don't. 

Maylay man, Singapore.

I met this young Malaysian Man as he was crossing a walking bridge into Singapore. I tipped my camera and gave him an inquiring look. He paused and gave me an ironic half smile. I took one photo and then we both moved on.

 

 

Here are a few things I've learned:

1. Be organized: Be ready to shoot quickly without futzing around with your equipment. (This is where what I said about simplifying your equipment comes in.)

2. Be obvious and open: Don't sneak around trying to pick off shots with a long lens. Act as if you have a right to be there and people will soon ignore you. If you're confronted, move on.

3. Be invisible: This simply means you work in an open, straightforward, and businesslike way without calling unnecessary attention to yourself.

4. Be occupied:  Actually, this refers to the subject rather than you. Often, the best time to photograph is when your subject is involved in some activity.

About the photos: The old gentleman in the top picture was captured with a CanonEOS A2 with, probably, the Canon EF 28-105mm lens. My brother, Steve, was photographed with an Olympus OM (film) system camera and the Olympus Zuiko 85mm f2 lens, as was the young man in Singapore. Steve was photographed with Kodachrome 64 film. Fujichrome 100D was used for the other photos.

See my October 3rd post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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     Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 28-105mm lens    Fujichrome 100D film     Singapore     travel photography     Kodachrome 64 film     Olympus OM (film) camera     Olympus Zuiko 85mm f2 lens     Dayton, Tennessee

The Ordinary Photograph

 The scarecrow behind the fire station. Hog Jowl Road, Walker County, Georgia.

No one is going to choose this photograph as a contest winner, nor is it likely to ever hang in an art museum. In fact, I've never even sold a print of it, although I did include it in one of my books. It's just an ordinary photograph of an ordinary country scene. 

But I like it. There's a certain satisfaction in the play of the early morning light across the corn leaves and the scarecrow's just-right costume. The old gate in the background encloses this little rural vignette.

Not all of our photographs have to be blockbusters. There's a place for the ordinary, the commonplace. Sometimes these little glimpses of life can be very satisfying. So when you look at a scene and think there's not much photographic possibility there, shoot it anyway. You may surprise yourself.

The photo: Probably a Canon EOS A2 with the EF 28-105mm lens, Fujichrome 100 film.

See my October 3rd post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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     Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 28-105mm lens    Fujichrome 100 film     Georgia     travel photography

The Book that Changed My Life

(Adapted from a post in June, 2020.)

Actually, the book that changed my life was the Bible. But the book that changed my professional life was Rock City Barns: A Passing Era.

In 1982 I began doing advertising and public relations photography for Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1988, Bill Chapin, the president of See Rock City, Inc. told me about his long-time dream to create a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

He decided not to proceed at that time, but my interest had been kindled. I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still repainting, and whenever my travels brought me near one, I made a photograph of it if possible. In 1994, after learning that the number of barns being repainted had dwindled to 85, I made prints of some of my photos and told him I felt that if we were ever to do a book, now was the time.

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

 

File Cards with Barn Locations

Cards like these were used by many businesses in pre-computer days.

 

 In a few days he sent me a box containing hundreds of old office file cards from the 1960s; Rock City's only record of most barn locations. On each card was the name of the property owner at that time, the highway, 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 the fold-over 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 these barns since the late 60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see.

So I went.

 

Sorting the cards into piles by states (15), and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994.  Over the next 18 months, stealing time from my studio whenever I could, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites.

 

When the photography was well along, I hired a designer and began writing the text. The designer found a printing agent and boom! I was in the publishing business! The agent placed our book project with a printing house in Belgium known for fine printing -- their principal business was museum catalogs.

Chapin ordered 20,000 copies for Rock City, which gave me a tidy profit on the enterprise. And this is where I made what I have come to regard as a serious mistake: instead of taking my profit and using it to finance other book projects, I reasoned that I could triple my money if I ordered 10,000 books to sell myself.

Unfortunately, I failed to consider the true costs. I had to hire additional staff to deal with taking orders and shipping; I had to rent additional office space; and I wound up spending a great deal of time over the next ten years promoting and selling the book: time that could have been used to build up my photography business and, as I said, to develop new book projects. Instead, I spent many weekends lugging my books and prints to arts and crafts shows and spent many hours traveling to book signings. 

As the old proverb says, "We grow too soon old and too late smart."

It was an interesting experience and kinda fun sometimes, but I do wish I had instead put the time into building up my business and developing new book projects.   

 

See my October 3rd Post for information about ordering original prints from the Rock City Barns book.

 

If you like my pictures, 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    photographic prints     Rock City Barns:A Passing Era    Rock City Barns pictures    Rock City Barns book     barns

Any Picture in the Book!

Rock City Barns: A Passing Era. More than 29,000 copies sold.

I'm now offering original photographic prints, suitable for framing, of any picture in the Rock City Barns book. All prints are made from the original slides and all prints will be signed by me.

This includes the pictures in the back of the book. They were printed in black and white for publishing economy, but were originally photographed in color and will be printed in color for this sale. (Unless you want a black and white print.)

Sizes and prices are:   11x14........$59.95

                                       16x20.......$99.95

                                       20x30.....$199.95

These prices include shipping. 

These are the original prices I set in 1996, when the book was published. If I were to adjust for inflation the prices would be much higher, but I want to make the pictures available to as many people as possible.

To order, tell me the page number(s) of the picture(s) you want. If there is more than one picture on a page, give me the position of the picture and the identifying caption beneath it.

You can send a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922, or you can use PayPal. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com. Please add 3% for PayPal orders.

If you don't have Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, used copies are available at Amazon.com at reasonable prices. (They even have new ones now and then, but I don't know where they get them. Probably from one of my former distributors.)

Some Rock City Barn prints are available at my pixels site at lower cost, but the selection is currently very small and they will not be signed.

If you like my pictures, 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    photographic prints     Rock City Barns:A Passing Era    Rock City Barns pictures    Rock City Barns book     barns

It's October!

 

  Blue and Gold

Chickamauga Creek* near its source in McLemore Cove,Walker County, Georgia.

 

October is the best of all months.

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 are from my limited edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. This little essay is one of my favorite bits of writing, which is why I republish it.)

*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 Cherokee.

The photo was made with my old reliable Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens and Fujichrome 100 film.

If you like my pictures, 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     Pentax 6x7 camera     Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens      Chickamauga Creek     Chickamauga, Georgia    Chickamauga Battlefield    McLemore Cove    Walker County, GA     October     Seasons