Please Yourself

 Blue on Blue. Florida beach scene, 2007.

Do you like this picture? 

I do, but it's okay if you don't. Not everybody has to like everything. I like it so much that I had a 20 by 30-inch print made that hangs in our guest bedroom. As is frequently said on the internet, YMMV--Your Mileage May Vary.

Most photographers are pleasers. We want people to like our pictures, and  by extension, like us. And of course, if we're photographing for pay, we had better make darn sure the client is pleased. And if we're making family/friends snaps, we want our subjects to be pleased as well.

But if we're photographing for ourselves and want to create significant work, we need to get past that. The world does not need any more cliches. Instead, we need to find our own subjects and our own way of seeing them. Or, they may be subjects everyone else has photographed. We must find a new way of photographing them to make our photographs our own.

What subjects?  I can't answer that question for you.  Edward Weston found his universe in peppers, shells, and rocks. Steiglitz found his in clouds, Ansel Adams in the forces of nature.  Dorothea Lange found hers in the faces of the poor and dispossessed, and Cartier-Bresson found his in the patterns of everyday life.  I have found mine in the play of light across a human face, and across the face of the land.  Ultimately, your answer will come out of your world view.

I believe that this world was created by a loving and sovereign God, and is filled with both beauty and mystery.  I believe he created man in his own image, and although man has fallen and that image has been broken and marred, it still exists.  Man is thus both noble and savage, and the world is a place of both darkness and light, of chaos and order.  I want my photographs to show a world of beauty and mystery, of light and darkness, of nobility in the midst of savagery.  There is chaos, but underlying it, there is order.

Your way of looking at the world may be different from mine.  If it is, your photographs should show that difference.  Your photographs must be yours.  They must come from your heart, your way of seeing life and the world.

So what subject?  The whole world is before you. Please yourself.

The photo was made in Florida in August, 2007 with a Canon EOS digital Rebel (amateur camera) and a Canon EF 24-85mm lens. 

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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    digital photography   art of photography    Florida   Canon EOD Rebel camera    beach scenes    Canon EF 24-85mmm lens

The Handyman's Last Stand

The almost-finished guest bathroom countertop.

When we bought our townhouse in January, 2023, both bathrooms were as they had been since the house was built in 1984. In both, the sinks and countertops were molded as one piece of faux marble. Louise wanted countertops of laminated acacia wood and new sinks. So we did the master bath first. Read about it here.

We got the wood for the guest bathroom countertop not long after that. I cut it to size, and Louise stained and varnished it. Then the project got bogged down. I had a bad fall which diminished my lifting ability, so I wasn't strong enough to lift out the faux marble countertop and sink, and I didn't want to break it up in place for fear of cracking the large plate-glass mirror above and behind it.

My son Don wanted to help me, but before he could, he had an acute attack of pericarditis which put him in the hospital and made it impossible for him to do anything for several months. So, the project languished.

It was brought back to life by a request from Louise that what she wanted for Christmas was to have the guest bathroom finished.

Okay, time to move. 

Don is still not available, so I contacted a handyman who had been recommended to me --Andrew Duncan, of (wait for it) Handy Andy Services! Andrew was precise and efficient and we soon had the old sink and countertop out and the new counter in place with the sink connected to the drain, but we then found that the water supply tubes to the faucet that came with the sink were the wrong size to fit the taps under the counter.

I thought I could finish that part myself, so I paid Andrew for his excellent work, sent him home, and ordered another faucet with standard water supply fittings.

I remember my mother telling me, when she was in her early 70s, how hard it was to get up if she got down on the floor for something. I couldn't image it. But I can now. In all, in order to install the faucet and connections, I had to get on my back on the floor four times, put my head and arm in the sink cabinet, and get up again. I did it, but this 88-year-old body struggled and strained. I wanted to see if I could still do it myself. And I could and I did. But I won't do it again.

Thankfully, the project is mostly finished and Louise is happy with it. I still have a little caulking to do, and I'm going to trim around the edges of the mirror with narrow strips of molding. And then my lifelong career as an unwilling handyman will be officially over.

I hope. . .

The photo: Fuji X-T20 with Fujinon XF 16-80mm (24-120mm equivalent) lens.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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    digital photography   home improvement    handyman work   Fuji X-T20 camera    cabinetwork    Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens

Learning to Use Light: Another Example

Another illustration of foods for healthy eating.

What's wrong with this picture?

In my previous post I wrote about an assignment I received early in my career to do tabletop photographs of various items of food for a piece on healthy living. This one didn't make the cut.

You're probably thinking "No wonder! It's too dark!"

That's true, but it's not the only problem with the photo. The deeper problem is that I didn't use a fill light. The main light was high and to my left, as in the previous photo, but there should have been another light, about half the strength of the main light, from the front, at camera position, to fill in some (not all) of the shadows. Consequently, this photo is unusable as an illustration for anything except poor technique.

If I had been more knowledgeable, I would have placed another light, again, about half the strength of the main light, high and about 90 degrees to the right of the set. This would have opened up the shadows on the right and given a little highlight to the vegetables in the basket.

When we were all shooting film, the best way to learn to light was with constant light sources, such as floodlights. Now that we have digital cameras with screens on the back, we can use flash instead of floods by setting up the flashes as we want them, make an exposure, evaluate it on our screens, and make adjustments to the flashes to achieve the effects we desire. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Like the photograph in the previous post, this one was made with a Nikkormat FTN camera with (probably) a Vivitar 100mm f2.8 lens and Kodak Ektachrome 200 film.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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   commercial photography    photographic lighting   Nikkormat FTn camera    studio photography    Vivitar 100mm lens     food photography    Kodak Ektachrome 200 film

Learning to Use Light

An illustration for healthy eating.

This is one of the first commercial photographs I made after opening my own business. It's one of a series I did for a piece on healthy eating.

I was working from home in those early years before I had a studio, so I arranged the items on a piece of burlap stretched over the pool table in my basement and photographed them with a Nikkormat FTN camera with (probably) a Vivitar 100mm f2.8 lens and Kodak Ektachrome 200 film. That was in 1978, so forgive me if I don't remember all the details.

I didn't have studio flash units in those early days, so I used flood lights -- which is a great way to work while one is still learning the trade, because you can see what the light is doing. With flash, one has to learn to visualize what the light is doing. That comes with practice and experience.

Notice how the light almost cradles the food items with warmth and texture, while the shadows define their forms. Lighting is the second most important skill in commercial photography.

The most important skill is the ability to find clients who will commission your work and pay you for it.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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   commercial photography    photographic lighting   Nikkormat FTn camera    studio photography    Vivitar 100mm lens     food photography    Kodak Ektachrome 200 film

The Precarious Life of an Independent Photographer

 Seamstress in a textile mill, Chattanooga, 1987.

This picture represents a major disappointment that almost put me out of business.

It was 1987, and I had a nice studio in an industrial area of Chattanooga. I had been on my own for eleven years, and although I wasn't setting the world on fire, I was making  a living. I had made contact with an executive of a large textile company who had big plans for an advertising campaign built around my photographs.

We made a trip to a knitting mill in Georgia, where I spent the day photographing, then. . .nothing. In a few days I learned that the company had been sold to another company which had plans that didn't include me. I had counted on spending most of the summer on that project, and now I was left holding the bag without enough work lined up to sustain us.

I closed the studio, which I could no longer afford, let my assistant go, and moved the business to the basement of my home in a close-in suburb. Somehow, we made it through the summer, and business began to pick up again in the fall. It was a difficult and disappointing time and I did some serious praying, but we survived. 

Such is the life of a small independent businessman.

The photo: A Hasselblad medium format camera with (probably) the Zeiss 50mm wide angle lens and Fujichrome film.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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   medium format    textile milling     Chattanooga    Hasselblad camera    photography studio    Zeiss 50mm lens     textiles    Fujichrome 100 film

Life on the Farm

Our cows chowing down on hay. 2010/11.

By 1987 our children were grown and on their own. We were happy empty-nesters and ready to begin a new chapter of life. And Louise had a dream.

A city girl who was born in New York City and grew up in Miami, Louise had for years longed to live in the country. I, on the other hand, grew up in the country and had no burning desire to return, but -- I love my wife, so what can you do? Besides, she had helped me achieve my dream of becoming a professional photographer. How could I refuse to help make her dream come true?

We had already begun to look for country property, both in Georgia and Tennessee, not really expecting that we might find something in McLemore Cove. But in 1985, a newspaper ad led us to 30 acres on a ridge with frontage on Chickamauga Creek, and on the day before Christmas, 1987, we moved into a 12x40-foot refurbished mobile home on our property, which we named Deer Run Farm (because the deer ran through it).

Living in the country was not enough for Louise. She wanted the whole farm experience. So the next summer, without consulting me, she bought four steers, which we fattened up and sent to market. We didn't have good fencing at the time, so it was. . .interesting.

After the steers were gone, I received my first out-of-the-US assignment: three weeks in Haiti, Chile, and Peru, documenting the work of Church of God Missions. When I got home I was surprised to find that we were now the owners of four pregnant cows. That was the beginning. For the next 25 years, I spent an average of 20 hours a week (my estimate) running the farm, plus my studio and travel photography. It was an interesting, sometimes strenuous, life.

By 2012, I was 75 and Louise was worried that I would get hurt working the cattle. There were also some other indications that it was time to, reluctantly, call it quits. We sold the cattle to a neighbor, and in 2013 they went to their new home. Our life became easier, but not as much fun. We miss those days.

The photo was made with an Olympus E-PL1. My first mirrorless digital camera.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed 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    digital photography   McLemore Cove    farming     Deer Run Farm    Olympus E-PL1 camera    McLemore Cove    North Georgia     cattle    Chickamauga Creek