The First Tree that Tried to Kill Me

The big limb that nearly got me.

As I was scanning some old medium format transparencies a few days ago, I found one I had forgotten about. Here's the story.

In November, 1985 we bought 30 acres of land in northwest Georgia's McLemore Cove. It was two years before we could actually move to the property, but in the meantime we moved our camper to the farm and spent many weekends there. About a hundred feet in front of the old house on the property was a very large old maple, probably three feet in diameter.

Memorial Day weekend in 1986, our son Don invited some friends from his high school ROTC unit to come out and camp. When it got dark, we built a campfire near the old maple and sat around it roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. Suddenly, a very strong wind came from the west and began blowing embers toward the old house. As we jumped up to put out the fire, there was a loud cracking sound and a massive limb (actually half the trunk) broke off and fell toward us. Everyone scattered. I guess I was too slow, or maybe I ran the wrong direction, because the limb fell all around me and knocked me down. I had a couple of broken ribs, but, looking at the limb as it lay on the ground, it is an absolute miracle I wasn't killed. It was approximately two feet in diameter at its base.

That was the first tree that tried to kill me. The second was in April, 2020. You can read about it here.

But I got my revenge!

A few months later the rest of the tree blew over, leaving a massive hole in the ground. We had a wood-burning stove in the den at our house near Chattanooga, so I cut that sucker up with a chainsaw, split it, and hauled it home in my little Ford pickup. It kept us warm for the better part of a year.

Photos: The picture at the top is an extreme crop from a 2-1/4 x 2-3/4 Kodak Ektachrome transparency. The bottom photo is a 2-1/4 x 2-3/4 Kodachrome in the rare 120 size, which was only made for a short time. Both pictures were made with a Pentax 6x7 camera with the Takumar 105mm f2.4 lens.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 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 2024 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     film cameras     Kodachrome    Kodak Ektachrome     Pentax 6x7     105mm Takumar lens

Is Digital Photography Better?

 

 Breakfast at Susie's, for many years the premier morning hangout in LaFayette, Georgia.

Depends on what you mean by "better." If quicker and easier add up to better in your mind, then digital photography is better. But photography is not about speed and ease -- it's about pictures. So are the pictures any better? I don't think so.

The varied but compatible crowd that frequented Susie's Sunset (I always thought it should have been Sunrise) Cafe in LaFayette, Georgia was photographed with a simple, quiet, Olympus SPn rangefinder camera with a fixed, 42mm lens. Would the picture have been better if I had fired off a dozen exposures with the latest digital camera? What makes the photo work is the composition of the group, and especially, the timing. This is what photographers call "the decisive moment," when everything comes together.

The late, great Robert Riger was one of America's premier sports photographers from the late 1950s through the mid-90s. He filled many books with his work, some of which are still available new on amazon.com and other sites. He did not have a camera such as the Sony A9, which, when you press the shutter release, fires off a string of shots from which the photographer can select the best when he edits the files. Yet, Riger turned out one great shot after another, working with slow film, even Kodachrome, which had an ASA (now called ISO) of 25, slow lenses by today's standards, and cameras with no autofocus. How did he do it? Composition and timing. Tools that are available to every photographer willing to put in the time and practice to learn them.

I'm not suggesting you go back to film. But I am saying that a digital camera will not make your photography better. That's something only you can do.

(Photo made with an Olympus 35mm SPn camera, Fuji color negative film.) 

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 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 2024 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     film cameras     Kodachrome     Robert Riger

35.000 Miles

The valiant 1987 Chevrolet Blazer at barn RCB-AL-11. U.S. Highway. 11, DeKalb County, Alabama.

I began the Rock City Barns book project at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994 and completed it at Waynesville, Ohio on April 6, 1996, just in time to meet the publication deadline. In between I visited 15 states and drove 35,000 miles, most of them in this 1987 Chevrolet Blazer. 

Using Rock City's old records of barn locations, I visited more than 500 sites and found barns in various states of repair on a little more than half of them. The only state where I did not find a barn was Michigan, and I later learned that I had been within just a few miles of one near Hillsdale (home of the prominent college). 

The Blazer served me well, except for a trip to northern Indiana and Illinois in the fall of '95, when the transmission came to a grinding (literally) halt. I called my brother Steve in southern Indiana, who came with his diesel truck and flatbed trailer, loaded my Blazer, and delivered me back to northwest Georgia and a transmission shop. Meanwhile, I rented a car and went back to Illinois.

The transmission never seemed quite right to me after that, so I eventually sold the car to my garageman, who drove it for years. So I guess the transmission wasn't all that bad.

These are the barn painters' file cards that I used to find barn locations.

(I made the picture at the top to go with a magazine article I wrote about the Rock City Barns book project. Canon EOS A2 film camera on a tripod, triggered by a remote release.)

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 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 2024 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     Rock City barns     film photography     film cameras    Canon EOS A2     Canon EF Fujichrome 100 film     Rock City Barns book    1987 Chevrolet Blazer

How Green Was My Valley

 A disguised Rock City barn north of Manchester, Coffee County, Tennessee.

When I first saw this barn on May 25, 1995, the words that immediately came to my mind were "How Green Was My Valley," the title of a book published in 1939 and made into a movie in 1941. Just about everything was green. The hillside, the trees, even the roll  of hay. Everything except the cattle and the Ruby Falls sign. Even the barn boards had a bit of greenish mold.

Strange as it may seem, not all Rock City's barns were faithful to their painter.  This barn, nine miles north of Manchester, Tennessee is one of two turncoats I found which had transferred their allegiance to Ruby Falls, another Lookout Mountain tourist attraction. 

But the change was not permanent. Returning from a trip north around 2005, I got off Interstate 24 at the north end of Manchester and went north to see how the barn had fared. I found that the Ruby Falls sign had worn completely away and the original Rock City sign was quite visible. I took pictures, but to my shame, I can't find them. 

In November, 2019, my friend the distinguished graphic artist, photographer, and teacher Michael Largent and I went out to make some photographs for my "Lost Barns" project. On a whim, we took a little detour to check out this barn. Approaching it from the south, I saw something I had not seen before: on its southern side was a sign for Meramec Caverns, an attraction near Stanton, Missouri which has many signs on barns in the Southeast and Midwest.

A Meramec Caverns sign hiding on the south side of the barn.

The little valley is no longer green, and the old barn is sagging. Time will be the ultimate master of us all. But I like to do what I can to preserve the memory of these relics of mid-20th century roadside culture.

(The top photo was made with a Canon EOS A2 film camera with the Canon EF 28-105mm lens and Fujichrome 100 film. The bottom photo was made with a Fuji X-T20 digital camera with the Fujicron XC 16-50mm lens.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.50 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 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 2024 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     Rock City barns     film photography     film cameras    Canon EOS A2     Canon EF 28-105mm lens      Fujichrome 100 film     Fuji X-T20 digital camera     Fujicron XC 16-50mm lens