Grapevine

Noticing…

Some of the most rewarding photography comes from the ability to notice something special among the ordinary. It is a kind of “reading between the lines” way of visualizing the world around you. If you train your eye to look for interesting shapes, colors, lines, textures, etc…, these elements begin to pop out at you in unexpected, yet very common places.

This grapevine and white railing were just outside the room of a bed and breakfast my wife and I visited for our 30th anniversary this past June. (Okay, maybe this doesn’t sound so ordinary, but this particular scene could be just outside any of our houses). Our breakfast was delivered just outside our door each morning in a picnic basket, and there was a nice little patio with table and chairs with which we were able to enjoy our breakfast on. My eyes were drawn to the way these grapevine leaves fell across the railing, and especially the little red tentacles that curled around the vines. I composed the image so that the railing ran diagonal through the scene, and the large two leaves to the bottom left counter-balanced the smaller two leaves at the upper right.

As I think about it, an anniversary celebration is a way we notice something special among the ordinary as well. It is a way to “read between the lines” of the everyday and ordinary stuff of a marriage relationship and celebrate the shape, color, lines and textures that have formed over the years. It is a beautiful and rewarding picture.

There is something about old barns and sheds that repeatedly draw my eye. It may be how they root us to our past, or maybe the attraction of living in simpler times. I’ve always loved the look of faded barn red paint. On our country road is a old red farmhouse with a small red shed nearby.

Old red shed

The farmhouse and shed were already abandoned when we built our home on this road over 25 years ago. A farmer up the road rented the adjacent land for planting corn. He always planted a few rows of sweet corn along the road on this property for all the neighbors. We got to know this farmer well– Don and Mary Shores. They taught us a lot about growing vegetables, raising and butchering chickens, and about the neighborhood. But we never did learn anything about this old farmhouse.

About 7 years ago I took my oldest son’s High School senior portrait with the faded red wood as a background. Two years ago I noticed how the shed was losing it’s battle with gravity and so I took some close up abstract shot of various parts of the shed.

Weary hinge

Weathered wood

Two roofing nails

While photographing this shed I could not help but wonder about its story. When was it built? Who built it? Did they have any power tools at that time? What was its purpose–animals, machines, garden tools? Was it owned by a young family or old couple? Did they farm the land themselves? What was life like back then? How many owners did it have over the years? When was the house and shed abandoned?

This past March we had some pretty nasty wind storms, and the shed could no longer fight the pull of gravity. It’s just an old shed and abandoned farm house… but it feels a bit like an old friend is gone. The pile of rubble remains, but the spirit of the place is gone.

Collapsed shed

Looking back I am glad I took images along the way. These images help tell the story and  give color, shape and context that words simply cannot. When words fail me–and more and more they do–the camera lens helps me articulate what it is I want to share.