Another Rock City Barn in Morning Light

Morning light on a farm scene near Kingston, Tennessee.

As I wrote in the previous post, I visited more than 500 sites in 15 states looking for Rock City barns. About 250 sites still had barns, or the remains thereof in some sort of recognizable condition.

Although most of Rock City’s barn painting program had been shut down in the mid-1960s, they were still keeping the signs painted on about 80 barns in the 1990s. This barn, located just south of Kingston, Tennessee, on Highway 58 had been repainted fairly recently.

I was working with one of the early Canon EOS film cameras and Fujichrome 100, a film with a naturally warm quality. However, my goal, always, is to show not only what a scene looked like, but even more, what it felt like. To accomplish that I often used filters, which are colored pieces of glass that mount on the front of the lens. Depending on the effect I wanted, I could use a cooling filter to add more blue to the scene, or a warming filter, to add more yellow/orange. I almost always used a warming filter in varying strengths according to what I felt the scene required. To be sure I got the effect I wanted I often photographed the same scene several times with different degrees of filtration.

This worked very well for me as long as I was photographing with film. In digital photography the filter effects can be added after the fact, but I've never been able to make it work to my satisfaction and I feel my photography is the poorer for the loss. Maybe I should work on it more.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.

 

Early Morning at Bean Station, Tennessee

Faded Rock City barn on U.S. 11W near Bean Station, Tennessee. Nov. 2, 1994

 

It's been a while since I've shown one of my Rock City barns, and this is one I've always especially liked.

When Bill Chapin, the president of See Rock City, Inc. asked me to create a book about Rock City barns, he sent me a box containing hundreds of old file cards from the 1960s. They were 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 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.

The photo above was made early on the morning of November 2nd, 1994 on my second trip. The location was U.S. Highway 11W near Bean Station in northeast Tennessee. The camera was one of the early Canon EOS models, and film, as usual, was Fujichrome 100 slide film.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.

 

 

Riding Shotgun

Donny never let anything deter him from his mission to keep us safe from alligators.

We were always an active young family. We began camping -- in a borrowed tent -- when Don, or Donny Joe, as we called him then and are forbidden to call him now, was just a baby.

We soon graduated to a used Ted Williams pop-up camper, which we loved, and made many trips in it.

We were living in Miami at the time, and decided one weekend to go camping in the Everglades. Donny was about a year old at the time, and thanks to his vigilance, even under extreme circumstances, we made it through the weekend without being eaten by alligators.

I made the photograph with a Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex camera that actually belonged to the private school where I was teaching and was yearbook advisor. I don't remember what kind of black & white film I used.

Don is now a very successful businessman who will be 54 this weekend. Life moves on.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.

Abandoned Church, South Carolina

Seen in a small town in South Carolina. I fought the urge

to procrastinate, stopped the car, and made the picture.

 

I seem to be on somewhat of a roll lately on this theme of abandonment. I have no idea why, but this interest in photographing abandoned structures showed up in the early 1970's when, on a visit to my parents in southern Indiana, I spent a day or two driving and photographing around the countryside where I grew up. Many of the homes of people I had known were abandoned; some were falling down. I told Louise at the time that I did not understand why I was drawn to photographing old structures, because "it was certain that I would never make a dime doing it."

But more than 20 years later, I did indeed "make a dime" photographing old buildings, as my pictures of barns bearing "See Rock City" signs, many of them abandoned, were published in a very successful coffee-table book. Rock City Barns: A Passing Era won many awards and sold nearly 30,000 copies. I no longer have any to sell, but used copies are still readily available at Amazon, and perhaps other places. I notice that occasionally new copies turn up, but I don't know where they come from. Maybe some of my distributors from back in the day find boxes of copies tucked away somewhere in their warehouses.

The abandoned church above was photographed as we were going through a small town in South Carolina on a pleasure trip to Charleston in the 1980s. I made the photo with a Minolta Autocord twin-lens reflex camera and Fujichrome 100 transparency film.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.