Making It Happen

My great granddaughter Lydia at our creek,

Deer Run Farm, McLemore Cove, 2018

Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon 27mm f2.8 lens

 

Blog Note: This post is one of a series on documenting your family. More to come. I apologize for the irregularity of my posts lately. In addition to the other difficulties I've mentioned recently, I've been having internet problems. I hope they're now ironed out, but we'll see.

I've been rather unfocused, if you'll excuse the expression, in this series of posts about documenting your family. So this post should probably have been the first in the series. 

I've spent my life in photography, as the title of this blog affirms. I've had the privilege of traveling to 33 or 34 countries and around much of the U.S. with my cameras and have photographed people and things in many different places. But whether my camera was pointed at barns or Bulgarians, most of the  photography I've done has been documentary.

I greatly enjoyed traveling and photographing all those people, places, and things, but the most important photography I've done was right at home, documenting the life of my family as we lived it. 

You can do the same, and you don't have to be a professional photojournalist. If you have a camera, even a simple digital point-and-shoot or a cell phone, you can make photos to preserve moments in your family's history that you will treasure in years to come, and more importantly, generations yet to come will treasure them even more. But you have to make it happen. 

How can you make a photo-history of your family happen? The most important factor is you. You have to choose to make it happen, because it won't just happen by itself.

1. Carry a camera -- and watch for opportunities to use it. I carry a real camera, because I like cameras. I like to handle and use them. But a cell phone will do the job. My daughter-in-law Kim provides us with a daily, running documentation of her family with her cell phone camera. My late sister Anah kept Kodak in business with her little Olympus point-and-shoot as her family was growing up. (Double prints of everything!) 

2. Get those photos out of your camera or cell phone and into your computer. If you don't, they will sooner or later be accidentally erased. Saving them to the cloud is good, but that's not really doing anything with them. Get them into your computer and sort through them (that's called editing).

3. Make prints. Select the ones you like best and/or consider most significant and send them out to one of the many on-line services and have prints made. Put them in albums. Remember, until a digital file is printed it's only a collection of electrical impulses. A print is tangible. You can hold it in your hands. You can show it to others (much better than asking them to look at the screen of your cell phone or the back of your camera.) 

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone 

Tags: photography, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins, cameras, Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon 27mm f2.8 lens, Kodak Olympus cameras

 

Rob and His Grandpa

 Rob looks on as his grandfather, C.E. Hedgepeth

fills the tank of our '63 Plymouth.

Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex camera, Kodak 120 slide film

  

Blog Note: This is one of a series of posts about documenting the life of your family in photographs.

 Rob, our oldest son, was born to my first wife, Barbara Hedgepeth of Sarasota, Florida. She passed away when Rob was only 22 months old. Louise and I were married two years later and she became his mother in every possible way. Don was born three years later.

We maintained a close relationship with the Hedgepeths. They were very much part of our family. Rob and Don had the unusual privilege of growing up with three sets of loving grandparents. 

Rob's grandfather, C.E. Hedgepeth, a fervent Christian, was probably the finest man I've ever known. He and his wife operated a small, two-pump Sinclair station on U.S. 41 on the south side of Sarasota when 41 was the main drag. He put three kids through college with that little gas station. 

When we lived in Miami in the late 1960s, we visited the Hedgepeths frequently. Whenever we came, he always insisted in filling the tank of our '63 Plymouth (a great car).

This is another photo from my lifelong documentation of my family. You can do the same. More to come. 

Blog Note: I'm sorry to have missed Monday's post. Louise had back surgery on Thursday, came home on Saturday, and I had a wedding to photograph on Sunday. Probably my last, as Cayce Callaway, the photographer with whom I've worked since 2013, has moved away from Atlanta and is winding down her involvement in weddings, and we hope soon to be traveling in our RV. I'm not sure how many weddings I've photographed -- somewhere over 300, I'm sure. The first one was in 1972, I think. 

Photograph and text 1969-2021 David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone 

Tags: photography, film photography, cameras, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins, wedding photography, family photography, Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex, Kodak  film

 

Busy Days

Louise and Donny in our yard in Miami, 1969 

Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex camera, Kodak Vericolor film

 

These are busy days. We were up early this morning to get Louise to the hospital for surgery to fuse vertebrae in her lower back. Apparently a busy day at the hospital too, as they finally got her into the operating room around 3 p.m. The surgeon says everything went very well, but Louise is in considerable pain this evening, more than she suffered from her neck surgery in early March. Once she recuperates we hope to hook up our RV and get on with our lives. 

Meanwhile, we're preparing for that time. We got our truck two weeks ago; a 2018 Dodge Ram 3500 diesel with dual rear wheels. Even if we get a larger trailer sometime in the future, we won't need a larger truck. This one's a Beast! A few days ago I got a fifth-wheel trailer hitch -- a most impressive chunk of iron. 

Sunday I have a wedding to photograph. Not really good timing, but this one has been on the books for more than a year and I wouldn't want to miss it, even though I'm only the second shooter. In fact, I haven't booked a wedding on my own since 2008 or '09, but I enjoy doing them and have enjoyed working with Cayce Callaway of Atlanta, a vey fine photographer, since 2013. So I'm busy charging batteries, checking my gear, etc. Busywork, but necessary and enjoyable. 

Besides, how many almost-84-year-old wedding photographers do you know? My philosophy is, if you want to do something, if you're able to do it, and there's no good reason not to do it, then by all means do it! Think young. Thinking old will kill you!

The photo at the top of this post is a teaser for something I'm going to talk about soon -- documenting your family.

Photograph and text 1969-2021 David B. Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, film photography, cameras, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins, Dodge Ram trucks, wedding photography, Yashica 124 twin-lens reflex, Kodak Vericolor film

Photographing What's There

The "See Rock City" sign rusts quietly away on a

lonely little barn in western South Carolina.

(From my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era)

Canon EOS A2 camera, 28-105mm f35-4.5 Canon lens, Kodak Ektachrome film

 

There are many different paths in photography, and many of them overlap. One of the major paths is documentary photography, which Wikipedia defines as " a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically covered in professional photojournalism, or real life reportage, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit." 

The Beginner's Guide to Documentary Photography says " In it’s most narrow definition, documentary photography is the practice of making a photograph which is an accurate representation of its subject. But the practice of shooting documentary photography is much richer than it’s definition would lead you to believe."

But as I said, the paths overlap. Almost every path in photography could be called documentary, because whether it's landscapes, weddings, portraits, corporate reports, fashion, product, or still life photography, it's about showing what something looks like.

I realized early in my career that for me, photography is an art of exploration. I consider myself a documentary photographer because the photography I most care about is photography that tells a story in pictures. In order to be engaged I must be working toward some sort of story, whether a photo essay or a photos-and-words story. The best years of my career were the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when I was developing and shooting A-V programs. Telling stories in photos and words. Doing books is also great, even better in some ways because they’re more permanent – assuming I can get them published!

I’m not an art photographer, except perhaps incidentally, or perhaps I should say accidentally. I’m always looking for visual puns, of course, but other than that I’m mostly not looking for stand-alone photographs, but photographs that advance a story. Many of my photographs are not strong on their own, but gain strength from their context as part of a story or sequence. The thing I do, though, is photograph the “thereness” of things. Many of the photographs in my books are like that, just “there.” Presented without art or artifice, and nothing special in the way of technique, just there and that’s just the way it looked.

Or, as the great Gary Winogrand said, "I photograph to see what things look like photographed."

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Tags: photography, Dave Jenkins, David B. Jenkins, documentary photography, Gary Winogrand, Rock City Barns, Canon EOS cameras, 28-105mm Canon EF lens, Kodak Ektachrome film, film photography