A Moving Experience

Japanese Magnolia near the back corner of our new home, Knoxville.

 

Yesterday I drove to LaFayette, Georgia to empty our storage unit and load everything into a U-Haul truck. Now we have all our possessions at our new home, but a lot of stuff is in the garage, where it will remain while we gradually absorb it into the house. We refer to this state of things as being carried in, but not yet moved in.  (Realistically, some things will probably still be in the garage ten years from now!)

Japanese magnolias and other flowering trees have been blessing our little enclave with beauty for the last week or so. I made the picture of the one by the back corner of our home on Sunday afternoon. 

We enjoy the warm weather and the beauty, but we are worried that this bit of spring is just to early. A hard freeze could cause a black spring like the one we had in 2007, when we had two 22-degree nights in late April that turned the leaves on all the trees black.

Louise's birthday is today. 39 again!

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Ability to Notice

Four women of Vernazza

 

"(Photography) is about reacting to what you see, hopefully, without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply about noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy."  Elliott Erwitt

Erwitt, whom I consider to have been the best photographer of the 20th Century and who is, amazingly, still active in his 90s, also said"All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice things."

Photography, of course, has many aspects. There's commercial photography, a field in which Erwitt and I both made our livings by making photographs to a client's specifications. But while I was merely a journeyman, he was among the very elite, commanding large fees. There's also journalistic photography, architectural photography, portraiture, art photography -- Erwitt was the master of them all. But his real love was spontaneous, candid "snaps," as he called them, of life on the wing. Today, prints of his "snaps" sell for $4,000 and up and have been made into more than 20 books.

As a photographer I'm far from being anywhere near Erwitt's class. But one thing I have learned from him and would hope to impart to you is simply to notice things.

With so much photoblog space these days devoted to technique and equipment, there's little discussion of what photography is really about. Equipment can be purchased and technique can be learned, but the ability to notice things takes dedication and practice. Keep your eyes open and your camera ready.

(This post originally appeared, with a different picture, on September 10. 2021.) 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

A Sense of Wonder

 

Who in the world abandons a valuable instrument

such as a harp to molder away in a field?

 

Photograph copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2020

 

 

Reposted from July 1, 2020

 

Photography is a tool with many uses. It can be used to make portraits, report the news, photograph weddings, fashion, landscapes, architecture, and products for sale -- its uses are almost endless. Yet, photography, alone among the arts, has an unique ability that goes far beyond its utilitarian applications. It is the sense of wonder.

As distinguished from other visual media, the art of photography is primarily the art of seeing. A photograph is created at the instant of exposure, and nothing done to it afterward will make it art if it was not well seen to begin with. Throughout the history of the medium, the works that have had power, the works that have lasted, have been straight photographs. Their power and their art are in the photographer's ability to see and to present his vision in a tangible form.

 

Beauty and mystery. Where is the woman whose shadow is at the left?

What is the significance of the hanging rope? Who is the man

half-seen on the right? What is the source of that brilliant light

illuminating the wall on the right?

The essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is "writing with light." The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality.

 Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: “The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."

As photographer Fred Picker wrote in Shutterbug Magazine, "This Koudelka (print by Czech photographer Joseph Koudelka). . .contains the most amazing combination of things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging. Here are two horses, standing in a certain position, a boy sitting on a bicycle wearing an angel suit with angel wings, here's an old lady scolding him, all in magnificent light and beautifully composed. Today, that picture could be made by some guy sitting in front of a computer. Knowing that would take all the wonder out of it."

The priest grabbed the bridal bouquet

and flourished it while the couple kissed.

In actuality, it isn’t likely “some guy sitting in front of a computer” would make such a picture, because those who alter and/or combine photographs are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can conceive. But photography goes beyond human imagination. As novelist Tom Clancy has said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.”

The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things that are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense; that is -- no one would ever have thought of such a thing happening. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of life, there it is. The uniqueness of photography is in that sense of wonder that only photography can provide.

 "I can do a beautiful illustration, but it doesn't have that 'instant of wonder' that a photograph will have." (Art Director Tony Anthony, quoted in Photo District News).

The Famous Laughing Horse.

I rest my case.

Photography shows us things that lie beyond our imagination and compel our amazement because they really happened. It revels in the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of life. It is the most powerful purely visual medium ever created.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Posting and Reposting

 

 Starr's Mill, Senoia, Georgia

Olympus E-PL1 camera, Zuiko 14-42 f3.5-5.6 lens

(Click to enlarge)

Blog Note: As you are probably aware if you follow this blog, I 've been reposting some articles from earlier days. There are two reasons for this: the first is that I have been extremely busy moving into and getting settled in our new home, as well as getting our RV ready to sell. I am totally mystified that we can't seem to fit the contents of a 325-square-foot RV into a 1700-square-foot condo!

The second reason is that many of you have discovered this blog relatively recently and have never read the earlier posts, some of which, I tell myself, are worth reading. Or even reading again.

Once we are well-settled into our new home I will go back to my practice of posting new material (at least mostly). Thanks for your patience, and If you haven't previously read some of the repeat posts, I hope you will enjoy them. This one is from February, 2021.

 

One of the most beautiful, well-preserved, and visible of Georgia’s many old mills is Starr’s Mill on Whitewater Creek, about eight miles south of Fayetteville on GA Highway 85. It's also one of my very favorites.

The first mill at this location was built of logs by Hananiah Gilcoat sometime before 1825, but the name “Starr’s Mill” came from Hilliard Starr, who owned the property from 1866 to 1879. The present building was erected in 1907 and was in operation until 1959.

Like many Georgia mills, Starr’s Mill was powered by an underwater turbine rather than a visible waterwheel to grind corn and operate a sawmill.  There was also a cotton gin on the property, and in its later years, even a dynamo that produced electricity for the nearby town of Senoia. 

Just for fun, I photographed Starr's Mill with a Canon 5D Classic, an Olympus E-PL1, and a Yashica twin-lens reflex loaded with Fujichrome Provia film. The Olympus and the Canon both have12-megapixel sensors, although the Canon's sensor is much larger, and the Yashica, of course, is medium format. This time, at least, the Olympus won.

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.