Lost Rock City Barns that Aren't

Going, going. . .

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When I began my barn photography project for Rock City, they gave me a box of old office file cards with all the known barn locations. However, as I began to travel around to find and photograph the barns I soon learned that not all the barns were barns. Some were sheds, some were garages, some were stores; there were even a couple of free-standing silos. There were no records of signs painted on the walls of commercial buildings. 

I also found in my travels that a number of barns (using the term loosely) had vanished from Rock City’s records, but not from this world. As I've written before, I call these “lost barns.” Since the publication of the Rock City Barns book, I’ve found many more; most with the help of readers of my book, but also some by my own explorations. 

But "See Rock City" signs painted on the walls of commercial buildings? They were not in the records I received from Rock City and they were not on my radar until I was driving on Frazier Avenue in North Chattanooga one day and noticed that a “See Rock City” sign was being sandblasted off an old commercial building near the end of the Walnut Street Bridge. I’m sure I had passed it hundreds of times, but it somehow never caught my attention until it was half gone. 

I passed this one every day without seeing it.

Likewise, the sign on South Broad Street. Through most of the ‘90s I had a studio in downtown Chattanooga and passed the sign on my way home at least five times a week. 

So why are these the lost Rock City Barns that aren’t? Well, first because they weren’t barns. They were signs. And second, because they weren’t lost, even though they were no longer in Rock City’s records. They were right there all along, hiding in plain sight.

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts?

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

Looking for Pictures

 Boynton Beauty Salon

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As I mentioned in my previous post, although I don't usually go out looking for pictures these days, I did a lot of it through the 1970s and on until 1988, when I began to get assignments, especially overseas projects, that were so picture-rich that I no longer felt the need to go looking for photographs. 

Although I was working in photography during most of those years, especially from 1978 on, when I had my own commercial/take-on-anything-that-comes-along photography business, there was a certain itch that couldn't be scratched by the general run of commercial work, even though I enjoyed most of what I did. 

Since I didn't live in town, street photography wasn't much of an option, or as they say these days, a viable option. I lived in the country, or at least on the edge of the country, so I spent many hours, especially Sunday afternoons, patrolling back roads looking for pictures. 

Early 1940s Ford pickup

There was a lot more driving than picture-taking, but I did manage to find a few photographs that I liked, and still like, and it ultimately pointed me in the direction of back roads and rural structures, which is largely what my books are about.

Both of these photographs were made around 1976, and as best I remember, were made with Nikon Nikkormat cameras; the beauty salon with a 50mm f2 Nikkor, and the old Ford pickup with a 28mm f2.5 Vivitar. Kodachrome 25 film for both.

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts?

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

 

Devlin Discovers the Sprinkler

Devlin in the spray.

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This will be a short post because I have many things on my mind and many things to do. We will be moving out of our home to make room for the estate sale people in less than a month, and then a few days after that, the closing. I'm just going to write, very briefly, about how I find photographs. 

I don't much go out looking for photographs these days, although there was a time when I did. Most of my photographs these days come from magazine or book assignments, projects, or simply come out of my life as I live it. 

Family, at least if you have one like mine, can be a rich source of photos if you keep your eyes open and your camera handy. This is my grandson Devlin, not quite three years old. becoming acquainted with a sprinkler. Devlin is 19 now, and a freshman at the University of Tennessee. I suspect he does not consider this his finest moment. 

The photo was made in 2004 with my first digital camera, the Canon EOS 10D and a 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 EF lens. 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photograph copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

Red on Blue Volkswagen

 

Red and blue -- the colors of Miami

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In September, 1969 I got my first really good camera, a Nikon F. I was teaching at a small private school in Miami in those long-ago days and got a $300 bonus for something -- I don't remember what for. I knew I wanted to use the money to buy a better camera than the Ricoh Auto 66 twin-lens reflex  and the Petri rangefinder cameras I was then using, but wasn't sure what to buy. At the time Brown's Camera on Biscayne Boulevard had a like new Leica M3 with the 50mm f2 Summicron lens for $295 in his showcase. I fact, he had several of them. But a guy I knew offered me his Nikon F without a lens, but at a price low enough to enable me to buy a pair of Tamron lenses -- a 35mm and a 135mm, both f2.8 -- for a total outlay of less than my $300. 

So I bought the Nikon, because I wanted to photograph my school's football games and reasoned that the 135mm lens would be best for that. I have wondered ever since how my work would have been different if I had embarked on my career in serious photography with a rangefinder camera instead of a single-lens reflex. 

I made the above photograph in the fall of 1969 or early 1970. Can't say for sure, because I've lost the original slide, but it was either Kodachrome 25 or Kodachrome X, the 64-speed predecessor to Kodachrome 64.

Around that time, Popular Photography, the leading photography magazine in those days, ran two features in different issues -- The Colors of London, and The Colors of New York. They ran series of photographs showing that the colors of London were red and black and the colors of New York were yellow and black. 

If I had thought about it, which I hadn't, I would have supposed that the colors of Miami were pink and pale blue or perhaps coral and lime. But the red VW on a blue background opened my eyes to see pictures all around me that showed Miami in red and blue. I still have most of those photographs and would love to show you some of them, but they aren't scanned and I don't have time to scan them now because we are heavily involved with closing our house and moving. Maybe I'll come back to it later when things settle down a bit. 

This picture, by the way, was also important in helping me learn early on to see and compose each photograph to include only what I wanted in the frame and nothing more. 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone