Barns

JanieM

My maternal grandmother was born in a farming village in Ohio and lived there until she died. I loved visiting her in the country, but I lived in towns and cities until the day I walked up the porch steps of the old farmhouse in Maine that I intended to make my home. My feeling that I was walking into Grandma Rose’s movie was strengthened by the way the past seeps into the present in rural Maine, with old stone walls, faded clapboards, ramshackle barns, abandoned farm machinery, and even fall color contributing to the effect.

Not long after I moved here, National Geographic ran an article about mass extinctions. I remember gazing out my window and trying to take in the fact that no matter how eternal the pine forest seemed, it was the mere blink of an eye in geological terms, along with the entire span of human occupation of this landscape.

Meanwhile, the residents of a neighboring town were debating a proposed land use ordinance with strict requirements for how new construction had to look. One day I was at a soccer game at the high school, which was built on land that had once been part of the same dairy farm as my house and barn. The school serves four towns, including the one that was about to vote on land use, and while I was at the game I met the woman who was pushing hardest for the new ordinance.

I agreed with some of her goals, but I also sympathized with the people who didn’t want to be constrained by her architectural preferences. Her passionate assertiveness didn’t exactly help her cause, at least with me. She gave me a pep talk while I was trying to watch the game, ending with an exhortation. “We have to preserve our heritage for future generations!” she cried.

With thoughts ranging from the National Geographic article to my own barn simmering in the back of my mind, I blurted out, “Annie, our heritage is dairy farming.”

That was the end of that conversation.

This is the last post focusing on the barn as such. Next time we’ll venture out at least as far as the old pasture, and maybe even further afield.

On The Road – JanieM – The Barn, #4Post + Comments (22)

JanieM

My old camera was retired last winter first and foremost because it didn’t take RAW images. But in fairness, it could have done more than I ever asked it to; only rarely did I try anything beyond “point and shoot.” Once or twice I used the macro setting to take pictures of flowers, and occasionally I activated the flash, though I didn’t know how to make good use of it. Now and then I focused the camera to get a certain exposure, then moved it to get the composition I wanted. Tricking it that way didn’t get me far, but at least it made me pay attention to exposure at a rudimentary level. (Not that I knew it was called exposure.) Other than that, I ignored the camera’s more sophisticated capabilities.

Then Steve from Mendocino came along and pointed out, in effect, that though I took some nice pictures, I could take better ones if only I would consent to learn a few photographic concepts and techniques.

I was retired, there was a pandemic on, I didn’t have much to do for fun. I thought, Why not?!

Little did I know.

It was a deep plunge into a new and confusing world, especially for a former math nerd who likes problems with clear answers. Algebra, for instance, can be lovely that way.

Steve edited a whole OTR post of fall color pictures the day WaterGirl put us in touch, explaining what he was doing via email. When I didn’t understand the explanations, he (and Google) clarified the vocabulary. Over the next few weeks I learned about clipping and burning and hot areas and filters and deliberately directing the viewer’s eye in certain ways. It seems obvious enough now, but it took a while for that idea to sink in, even though I knew that a written text does something like that, so why not pictures?

The process is ongoing. I’m learning to think more consciously about exposure and depth of field, and that it’s a good idea to walk around a subject before taking out my camera, to think about how I might want to shoot it. I’m starting to notice the difference between eye-catching patterns and pictures that tell a story. Lately I’ve started using the flash a bit and taking pictures of people, which I had mostly been avoiding.

And then there are the Lightroom and Photoshop lessons. New information doesn’t stick in my brain as readily as it did when I was young, but fortunately, fun and friendship are part of the package, keeping frustration mostly at bay.

On The Road – JanieM – The Barn, #3Post + Comments (23)

JanieM

Having worked at home even pre-pandemic, and being a homebody in general, I’ve spent many hours looking out my windows, watching Maine’s changeable weather, the days and seasons passing, and the endless play of light and shadow.

This long contemplation of one intimately familiar landscape makes me think that if I went to sleep, like Rip Van Winkle, and woke up at some random hour on some random day, I would be able to tell you the time of year and the time of day to within a very small margin, from the foliage, the state of the fields, the length of the shadows, and the quality of the light.

It’s probably not true, and anyhow, the seasons are so clearly differentiated in Maine, it’s not much of a test. But that meditation in turn made me think about the sun’s path, and one day I realized (astronomers feel free to correct me) that the sun passes through any given point in the sky only twice a year – once on its way up to the summer solstice and again on its way down. Hence the shadows are different every single minute of every single day, even if the change from one day to the next is imperceptible. Never mind that living things constantly grow and change, so each maple tree’s shadow will reach a little further next year.

This is the background of my habit of taking lots of pictures of what seem to be the same scenes, over and over. You can never step into the same river twice….

On The Road – JanieM – The Barn, #2Post + Comments (25)

JanieM

I got my first digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix, in early 2008. When my son left for China that September, I made a photo diary on Picasa to mark the year going by. Later I joined a Flickr group run by a Crooked Timber blogger, and last fall, for my sanity’s sake, WaterGirl nudged me toward On the Road as an antidote to election madness. I started submitting photos soon afterwards.

All this time, though I loved taking pictures and shared them often, I knew nothing about photography and even less about post-processing. Then one day Steve from Mendocino waved at me from across the room of this almost top 10,000 blog and asked if he could edit some of my pictures of fall color. WaterGirl facilitated the connection, and a new world opened up for me.

I owe Steve thanks for many things, including the intro to this series and his input on the new camera I got last winter. He continues to edit my pictures, even as he helps me learn how to do it myself. The collaboration is a treasure.

Thanks are also due to WaterGirl for adding go-between to her many blog duties, and to Balloon-Juice for giving us all a place to enjoy each other’s photographs.

A lot of my pictures are taken within a stone’s throw of my house. I’ve lived here for thirty-four years, paying constant attention to the sky, the weather, the seasons, and the amazing fact that someday I’m not going to be here, but right now I am. Everything changes, and my pictures are my ongoing attempt to capture the flow, one moment at a time.

On The Road – JanieM – The Barn, #1Post + Comments (25)