The Upside-Down Sky

Rock City Barn KY-18: Kentucky Highway 91 in Caldwell County, near Princeton. 

 

 All told, I found 48 barns with "See Rock City" signs in Kentucky; second only to Tennessee's more than a hundred. Which is not surprising because Kentucky's long east-west shape meant that most travelers coming down from the midwest had to pass through it.

This particular barn is in western Kentucky and is on an obscure state highway well off the beaten path. My memory is not too clear on this, but I think I first photographed it while on a visit to our son Rob, who lived in Paducah at the time. This would have been in the late '80s. 

I had not yet been commissioned to do a book of Rock City barns, but I hoped to make it happen. I had been given a list of barns they were still painting, so anytime I came within reasonable distance of one I attempted to make a photograph if at all possible. 

When I had accumulated 20 or 25 such photos I had prints made from the slides and asked for a meeting with Bill Chapin, then president of See Rock City, Inc.

At that time, Rock City was only maintaining about 85 barns. I told him that if he ever hoped to do a book of the barns, now was the time, because they were rapidly disappearing. 

Bill thought about it for a few minutes and then said, "Okay, let's do it." And that's how the Rock City Barns book came to be. 

The picture shown here is not that first one from the '80s. This one was made just after sunset on July 20, 1995. I've always loved the way the colors in the sky are reversed. 

(Canon EOS A2 film camera, Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens, Fujichrome 100D film.)

Signed copies of the new second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography 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.

Tags: photography    travel     Kentucky     barns     See Rock City     Rock City Barns    Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens    Fujichrome 100D film     film photography

Flowers to the Rescue

 Rock City Barn GA-33. Old U.S. 411, Murray County, Georgia. 

When See Rock City, Inc. asked me to find and photograph every existing "See Rock City" barn, they gave me a box full of old file cards -- more than 500 of them, in fact, that the barn painters had used to keep track of their work. I sorted the cards and organized them be state, by regions within states, and by highways, and began traveling and photographing whenever I could take a few days away from my studio. In all, I traveled about 35,000 miles in 14 states over an 18-month period in my old Chevy Blazer, visited all 500-plus locations, and found about 250 barns still standing in some sort of condition. I also, along the way, found about 20 barns that had been lost from Rock City's records. This was one of them.

                                       Some of the file cards with Rock City barn locations.

Someone told me about a Rock City barn on old U.S. Highway 411 south of Chatsworth in Murray County, Georgia, so I went looking. Arriving at the location, I found a barn on each side of the road, neither with a visible "See Rock City" sign, and some older people sitting on the porch of a nearby farmhouse. 

Walking up, I asked them about the barns. They told me that this barn had a "See Rock City" sign at one time, but had been re-roofed so long ago that even the new roof had rusted. 

Since there was nothing outstanding about the sign-less barn, I had to find something else to make a good picture. The thick, colorful growth of flowers in the foreground was it. 

This was Louise's favorite picture from the Rock City Barns book project, so I put it on her dedication page.

(Canon EOS A2 film camera, Canon EF 24mm f2.8 lens, Fujichrome 100D film.)

Signed copies of the new second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography 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.

Tags: photography    travel     Georgia     old U.S. Highway 411     barns     See Rock City     Rock City Barns    Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 24mm f2.8 lens    Fujichrome 100D film     film photography

Another Old Tractor in Great Light

Ford tractor in barn. Georgia Highway 193, Walker County

 

This barn is located on Georgia Highway 193 a few miles south of Flintstone. I passed it every day going to and from my home in McLemore Cove to my studio in Chattanooga. Although there was no good place to pull off the road, I stopped and made the photo anyway because I liked the feel of the early morning light. 

Jenkins Rule of Photographic Proximity states that the photogenic qualities of any scene are in direct inverse proportion to the possibility of a place to park within a reasonable distance.

The tractor is a Ford from the 1950s, still a very popular model despite its age. Many country people like to have them around for light to medium farm duty, and parts are readily available. This scene was probably photographed in the 1990s, because I was still using film.  I photographed a similar tractor, the slightly earlier 8N model, in a shed on U.S. Highway 19 north of Dahlonega in 2006. You can see it here.

The camera was a Canon EOS A2, with most likely, the EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens. The film would have been Fujichrome 100D, my all-time favorite.

Signed copies of the new second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography 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.

Tags: photography    travel     Georgia     McLemore Cove    Canon EOS A2 camera     Fujichrome 100D film     film photography

When You Find Something Good, Keep Working It

 Clarence Spindler and his "See Rock City" barn. U.S. Hwy. 41, Gibson County, Indiana.

(Repost from August, 2011.)

 

It was early morning when I pulled up to Clarence Spindler's farmhouse on U.S. Highway 41 just north of Evansville, Indiana. Clarence and I had never met; in fact I was not even sure he was still living. All I had to go on was an old file card from the 1960s which had been used by the sign painters who traveled the countryside back then painting "See Rock City" on every barn whose owner would permit it. Thirty-some years later, I was there in pursuit of my quest to make a photograph (and a book) of every Rock City barn still in existence.

 

Several knocks having produced no answer, I went on around to the barn and began making photographs: first, a series in half-stop brackets, then the same with a Cokin #85 filter to emphasize the warm feel of the rising sun. Clarence himself arrived on the scene just then, and after a few minutes of introduction and pleasant reminiscing I asked if he would mind being in my picture. He allowed that it would be all right and stood where I asked as I made another set of bracketed exposures. "Better and better," I thought. I had a good photo of the barn alone, and an even better photo of Clarence and his barn.

 

Then serendipity sent a kitten to wrap itself around Clarence's legs and look up at me with eyes gleaming in the morning light.  

 

(Canon EOS A2, 24mm Canon EF lens, Fujichrome Sensia film, Cokin #85  pro-series filter.)

Signed copies of the new second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to me at 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography 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.

Tags:   photography    Indiana     travel    Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 24mm f2.8 lens    Fuji Sensia film     Rock City     See Rock City     Rock City barns     barns