A Lifetime of Great Dogs: VII

Georgia, 10/16/2014. The day she came to us.

Blog Note: If you're getting a little impatient with all the doggy posts and have been wondering "When is this guy going to get back to photography?" I have two things to say: First, this will be the last post about dogs for a while. Second, what I have been doing all along is giving an object lesson about one of the very most important functions of photography: using it to document and enhance your life.

After the deaths of Rusty and Honey, Louise and I grieved for them. Especially Louise. I said, "Let's ask God to send us a new dog. So we prayed.

Our farm was about a half-mile back on Sourwood Lane, a private road that branched off Andrews Lane in McLemore Cove. Back in the spring, Louise had seen a small, orange, long-haired dog hanging around the entrance to our lane, but couldn't entice her to come. Debbie and Jeff, who lived across Andrews Lane from our property were able to get her to come live with them. They named her Georgia. She had a litter of four puppies, which they gave away. Sadly, in early fall, Debbie died suddenly. 

Georgia would go constantly from room to room looking for her friend. To make things worse, she was not yet housebroken. Jeff determined to send her to the pound, and told his mother. She said, "No, don't do that," and called Louise. And that's how Georgia came to live with us, just three weeks after Honey died. 

She is, we think, a long-haired Chihuahua with a mixture of Corgi and perhaps some Pomeranian. Mostly, she is herself. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as the saying goes.

How's that for a dog's life?

She has been with us for more than ten years now, and is a full member of our household, sleeping between us in our king-sized bed. She enjoyed living in our 5th-wheel trailer, and is now enjoying dominating the other dogs in our townhouse community. Although she is at least 11, possibly 12 years old, she is as frisky as ever and shows few signs of aging. We hope she will be with us for a long time to come.

She knows she has it good.

Photos were made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera and the Olympus Zuiko 45mm lens or the Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book 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 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 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     digital photography     Olympus E-M5 digital camera     Olympus Zuiko 45mm lens     Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens    family history   dogs     Chihuahuas

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: VI

 

Honey and Rusty both were retrievers. They loved to swim.

Having expounded at length in my previous post about my philosophy of photography, which is, as photography critic Bill Jay wrote, "The Thing Itself," it's time for a change. This post is going to the dogs.

For ten years we enjoyed the companionship of the pair we called our "big dogs." Honey and Rusty were with us in just about everything we did on our little farm.

They were with us when we went snow-boarding. . .

Or when we were  just hanging out by the pool. They were our buddies.

Honey loved to lie on our back doorstep and show the world her beautiful profile. . .

And Rusty had his own noble profile. He was the sweetest of dogs.

By the summer of 2014, Honey was 14 years old and was noticeably slowing down. Each day, Rusty would nuzzle her until she got up, then they would go off on their morning patrol of our property and the neighborhood.

In late August it became obvious that Rusty was having some distress. By Labor Day weekend, he was in severe pain. We think he had stomach cancer. He died a day or two later as I was taking him to be put to sleep. I will always deeply regret that I didn't take him sooner.

Without Rusty to make her get up and keep going, Honey failed rapidly. She died three weeks later. We buried them both in a corner of the pasture in front of our house and planted a Japanese magnolia tree on their grave.

We will always remember the faithful friends of some of the best days of our lives.

Most of the photos were made with a Canon EOS 5D Classic digital camera and various Canon lenses.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book 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 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 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     digital photography     Canon EOS %d Classic camera     Canon EF lenses   family history   dogs

Photography Is about What Is

Old barn near Collegedale, Tennessee.

The distinctive thing about photography, the feature that distinguishes it from all the other arts, is its direct and essential connection to reality. Simply put, you can't photograph something unless it exists. Photography is about what is.

A painter can make a painting that may or may not resemble reality, but it will have no intrinsic connection to reality. Someone can use AI to make a creation that looks like a photograph in every detail. It may be very well done, but it is not a photograph. 

A photograph is a picture made by light rays. The word "photograph" is made from two Greek words: "photos,"which means "light," and 'graphos," which means "to write." So, to photograph means "to write with light." 

A photograph is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that really exists onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that has objective reality 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. 

The unique purpose of photography is to show what things look like in the real world. As distinguished from other visual media, the art of photography is primarily the art of seeing. The great photographer 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."

Painters, those who alter and/or combine photographs, and those who use AI to create "photographs" will tell you that they are only limited by their imaginations. And that's precisely the point -- they are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can imagine. But photography goes beyond human imagination. AI can never replace photography, because photography is the art of wonder.

 Who could have imagined a laughing horse?

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. 

"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.)

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.

Our work as photographers is to isolate and clarify the things we see so that others may through us see in a new way the world that is around them. 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book 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 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 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     philosophy of photography   AI

A Lifetime of Great Dogs: V

 Bounce with our grandsons Nathan and Michael. "Will someone get these kids offa' me!?

We'll get back to Bounce in a few minutes, but first, I want to introduce Honey. In early 2000, one of the doctors with whom Louise worked in the emergency room at Hutchinson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe gave us a puppy. Her mother was a purebred Labrador, and her father, a purebred German Shepherd. When I first saw her, I said, "She's a honey!" And so she was -- a honey of a dog; also our longest-lived one. She lived to be almost 15. She had the gentle nature of a Labrador, but when she thought it was necessary she could produce a most authentic German Shepherd bark. Honey was sweet-natured, but always a serious dog.

Honey-Puppy, as she arrived at her new home. She was always a serious dog.

In 2002, Don and Kim, our son and daughter-in-law gave us a Boston Terrier named Bounce. He had a most distinctive personality and brought a lot of enjoyment into our lives, even though our time with him was brief.

One afternoon, as Louise and I were clearing some brush from the pasture down near the creek, Bounce followed Honey to the creek. Sometime later, when it was time to go back to the house, Honey came, but Bounce was not with her. We found him several days later. He had drowned. We buried him beside Max, with much grief.

Rusty and his best friend, Louise.

About a year later, Louise noticed a golden retriever type dog hanging around our mailbox for several days as she would come and go. One day, he followed her home. She drove into the garage, and before she could close the door, he came in. She opened the car door and he laid his head on her lap and looked at her with soulful eyes. He was our dog from that moment on. We named him Rusty. He was the sweetest dog we have ever owned.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book 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 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 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     family history   dogs