Thursday, April 10, 2025
Well, I kind of succeeded in my goal for the day. I wanted to go out for a quick trek and get a couple of photos to work with during the rainy afternoon. It was a quick trek, and I only got a few photos, but the processing on them ended up taking a bit longer than I would have thought. This was largely due to the conditions that I was shooting in because there was some very flat light, and the sky wasn’t all that good to be honest. While I did everything that I could do in the field to make my life easier in front of the computer, I still spent longer processing the images than I did shooting them.
So, if the light wasn’t that good, why did I go out? Well, I’ve been tied up here lately with jobs around the house and working through my last workshop getting ready for the online portion. As I got to the close of those things, I was looking at the weather which was showing a cloudy day with some showers on Thursday. Beyond that, there was really nothing but sunny days ahead. Knowing that I have a two-day detail coming up on Toni’s new car, I wanted to get one more trek under my belt while the weather was promising for it. The problem was, I’ve been thinking about so many things that were not my next trek, I really didn’t have a clue about where I wanted to go.
The answer came from Toni who was meeting someone to pick up some new plants on the way home from work which took her through Jonesville. She had told me about some barns that she had seen on some of the side roads that she figured might be something that I would like to photograph. I had no idea what the barns looked like but knew that the area was almost an hour away which meant that I wasn’t going to do any scouting ahead of time. It was going to be a go out there with the camera and see what I could do kind of situation. Looking at the weather, there were different layers of clouds forecasted for the area which usually gives me some interesting textures to work with. The sky comes into play a lot more with barn photography than it does with my old cars which I usually end up photographing without much of a sky present.
There was rain coming in during the late morning and through the afternoon which kind of set an early timeline for the day. I wanted to be back home by 11am when the rain was supposed to start, and that meant that I was going to need to be out pretty early considering the location that I was wanting to shoot was nearly an hour from home. I was going to need time to scout and find something as well since I really had no plan for the morning. To make things simple, I got up when Toni was leaving to go to work around 5:45 or so. That gave me time to get my morning stuff taken care of and to give Toni time to get out that way to tell me what the sky was doing.
She told me that the sunrise looked great and that there was texture in the sky. That was all that I needed to hear before loading up the camera and starting that way. I took the route into Jonesville that I am quite familiar with and kept my eyes out for anything that might be promising along the way. This is an area that I have shot many times over and really like the scenery. I did pass by one barn that I hadn’t really noticed before. It was situated down a long driveway and was kind of isolated in a field which is usually something that I prefer with my barn photos. It was a little early for me to go and knock on a door which I was going to need to do with how far into the property the barn was. I just made a mental note of the location and decided to check it out on the way home. I still had to scout the area that Toni had suggested and see if there was something that would work with the lighting.
Speaking of lighting, the light was very dim, and I was still rolling with my headlights on which did not bode well for the photography which could stand a little more light on the landscape. While I don’t care for bright sun, I do like a bit of directionality to the light and enough light create some visual interest. Right now, things were just very flat, and the sky wasn’t really looking all that wonderful. It was mostly overcast and there really wasn’t much in the way of texture to be seen which was going to limit the subjects that I could shoot to those that were covered in trees to fill the sky with some interest. It wasn’t starting out all that well in terms of conditions.
When I did get into Jonesville and started to drive on the roads that Toni had pointed out to me, I could see a lot of potential, but nothing was really jumping out as a photograph ready to be made. Some of the best subjects were buried in the trees and just not visible enough for me. Other subjects had houses too close by that didn’t fit the vibe of the barns. I was really hoping to see some old cars or something because this is the kind of light that I can really work with when it comes to photographing those subjects. There were just none around. What I had to work with was barns, and before long I resigned myself to the fact that if I was going to get any photos out here, the subject was going to be a barn of some sort.
After I had been on the second road that was suggested, I caught a glimpse of an old tobacco barn off on the right. The light was looking decent on it as it was exposed to the East and what sunlight was shining was hitting the face of the barn. The sky was not looking good though, so I was happy to see that the barn was nestled into some trees that gave some visual interest above it so that I wouldn’t have to include the sky at all. Figuring that it had some potential, I got turned around and pulled into what probably used to be a driveway. I grabbed the camera and tripod and started to look for the right angle to shoot this one from.
After a little fiddling with the angles, I found one that I liked that included an interesting tree to the right of the barn and plenty of trees in the background. I liked the composition for the fact that the sky was successfully omitted and that there was enough breathing room around the barn, but it still felt a bit claustrophobic with the front of the barn leading to the left edge of the frame. It was what I felt was the best available option at the time though.
I spent some time with this composition and worked the shutter speed to deal with the breeze and motion in the grasses. I tried some variations on the framing, but nothing was really making the composition work like I really wanted it to. In a moment of desperation, I pulled back and opened up the lens a bit more to include the sky in the upper left. This allowed me to get some of the field which gave a nice contrasting texture to the rest of the scene. The sky was still rather overcast and bland, but I could barely make out some detail in the clouds which gave me hope. I got the composition where I wanted it and then set the exposure to protect the highlights before making a single exposure. I really didn’t like what I was seeing in the image review and decided that the dynamic range of the scene was too much. I saw no need to continue with this composition because there was just nothing that I could do about the exposure. I had gotten it as close as I could get, so if this composition was going to work, it was going to work with that single frame.
As a side note, when I got the images home, I went through the culling process and that single image was one of about 10 that made it through the first stage of culling. It then joined the five that made it through to the second stage. This was due to the composition, not the exposure which still looked horrible on the computer. I could tell that there were no blown highlights, and the shadows weren’t bunched up which gave me hope that this one could actually work out. I loved the composition because it gave an element of depth that the other ones that I shot didn’t have. I really liked the sense of place that it provided and because of that, this was the first image that I put through the processing treatment.
It was not an easy image to work, but as I went through all my different phases, the photo started to come together. The exposure had worked out much better than I thought and that faint texture in the sky came to life with a few local masks applied. In fact, the entire photograph just worked. The red blooms on the tree over the barn came out wonderfully, and the tones on the barn matched the sky once it was brought under control. There was a really nice color contrast present through the frame that I really liked as well. For a photo that I thought wasn’t going to turn out at all, I ended up with my favorite one from the day. You just can’t ask for better than that!
Before calling it quits for this barn, I moved over to where the truck was parked and looked at the barn one more time. The front view was pretty good too, and I liked that from this angle, I could get that smooth grass to fill the foreground. I lost the interesting tree to the right, but I felt that this might be a stronger version of the composition that I had started with since the entry to the barn wasn’t nearly as close to the edge of the frame. I set the camera up one more time and framed up another variation on the composition. The wind was a bit calmer at this point, so the shutter speed wasn’t nearly as problematic for me which make the exposures easier to make. There were just a handful of variations with this one before I was satisfied that at least one of the frames that I had shot would be good enough to keep.
Of course, you can see that I ended up keeping two of the photos that I shot of the old tobacco barn. The second was from that alternate position that turned out to be better than the first one that I had shot. I also liked it in black and white because it tended to focus the eyes more on the barn than the color variation did. There were still some clues as to the season that this was shot in, but I realized that this barn had been around for more seasons that it could count, so the season no longer mattered to it. It just seemed to be at home here at the edge of the field beneath all of the trees. The textures were what made this composition interesting, so I decided that the colors really didn’t play into the photo at all. Now that I’ve lived with it for a while, I do believe that I made the right choice for the presentation of it.
I ended up shooting a total of 13 frames from this single barn. Many of them were duplicates in order to get the grass to be still with the slight breeze. I didn’t want to boost the ISO any higher than was needed, which in some cases was ISO400 to get the shutter speed where I wanted it for the lulls in the breeze at just under a half second for most of the shots. It is funny that the first composition that I went with wasn’t even a consideration for going through the editing process. The only one from where I had started shooting that I liked was the one that included the sky and there was only that single frame from that composition. At least I did shoot it even though I didn’t think that it was going to work.
I did continue to explore the area that Toni had found for me and saw more potential, but nothing that was going to make a good photo in the existing conditions. After about 30 minutes of driving around, I turned back towards home and started that way. Of course, I was still looking and there were a couple of spots that I wanted to look at on the return trip. One was a barn that happened to be on a side road. I turned down that road and found the barn to be too new and was so close to the house that it looked to be attached. The next barn that I stopped to look at was further away from the house, but there was nothing around it to add to the visual story. I didn’t want to just make a postcard shot of a barn and really needed something else to add to the composition for a bit of visual interest.
There was also a Ford Galaxie that I had spotted at a dealership in Jonesville that I stopped to look at. It was neither in good condition nor bad condition which meant that it was just kind of boring. I looked for isolations that I could shoot but nothing was really jumping out at me. I decided to leave that one alone and continue on through Elkin and back to where the barn was that I had seen on the way out a couple of hours earlier.
When I passed by the barn, I noticed that the sky wasn’t as good as it had been earlier, but there was still good light on the barn. I figured that I could get a shot of it that included only a little bit of the sky, but in order to do that, I was going to have to get permission to access the property as it was well off of the road. I could see that the front door was open to the main house and with it being after 10am, I felt comfortable going and knocking on the door. After a brief introduction about why I was bothering him, he gave me permission to go and photograph the barn. With that, I moved the truck over to the other driveway and grabbed the camera. I debated on which lens to use as I could have shot this well with either the standard or the telephoto lens. I chose the standard one because it would give me the option to go wide if the sky decided to look good at some point. For now, it was blank white, overcast, and I was figuring that I would be shooting this in black and white to try and add interest to the sky.
I found the composition that seemed to work the best and began making exposures with slight changes in the composition. I wasn’t really liking how the sky was looking and kept trying to raise the camera to get the trees to look taller behind the barn. It wasn’t working as I had hoped and I decided to look at the other side of the barn to see if I could get a better angle to omit the sky. I did find a composition that I liked from the back side and shot a couple of frames of that before I realized that it was just a simple, single subject composition following the rule of thirds. I needed more in the frame to give it a story. I came back around to the other side where I started and was met by the owner’s wife.
She had some papers in her hand and offered them to me. It was an issue of the Roundabout from February 1998, which was a free publication for the town of Ronda. It had news and history in it. She had brought it out to me because one of the stories in it was about W.E. Sale who was a prominent member of the community in the early 1900’s. William Sale studied to be a teacher and taught in the Wilkes County Schools, and he also carried the mail for about five years on a motorcycle. William and his wife moved into a home in Ronda that was built in the 1850’s and he added onto it in the 1920’s. Around that time, William opened a general store in downtown Ronda which did well until the depression. With so many out of work, he erected a cannery beside his house where chicken coops could be made in the winter to keep people employed. During the warmer months, the building was used as a cannery for fruits and vegetables which were grown on the property. This building became a highlight of the community throughout the depression, and it still stands today along with the house that William and his family had lived in. The house has been maintained and upgraded as the years have gone by, but the original cannery is showing the results of time.
I was so glad that she brought the history of the structure out to me. I had been under the assumption that this was just a barn when I stopped to get permission to shoot it. Now I understood more about it and the importance that it once had to the community. I’m sure that most who live here no longer know anything about the cannery and possibly see it as yet another barn that is falling in on itself. This is a big part of why I like to photograph these kinds of subjects. Before long, they will all be gone along with the history behind them. I see it as a great privilege to be able to capture some of these scenes possibly for the last time and immortalize them in a state that most would gladly dismiss them. The important work is no longer happening here, but this barn has stood for a century now after helping countless folks make a way during the Great Depression. We can look at it and appreciate the craftsmanship and what it provided back then, and without a doubt for many decades afterwards. It is another chapter in the “times gone by” chronicles that I seem to be capturing with my camera.
As I was talking to her, I noticed that the sky was starting to get some texture to it and when our conversation was over, I went back to about where I had started shooting it and went a little wider on the lens. This time, I was wanting to capture the sky, or at least enough of it to add a little scale and atmosphere to the frame. It was a little easier to deal with than the tobacco barn from earlier because the main subject was not in the shadows of the trees around it. The exposure was a good bit more even this time around and I was able to get what I felt was a decent spread of tones and could actually see the detail in the sky during the image review which is usually a good sign.
It was this series of shots that led to the one keeper from the location. The other photos weren’t bad by any stretch, but at the same time, they lacked something which I had present in the photo containing the sky. The lighting really was asking for the sky to be included in the shot for everything to really make sense. I did try a couple of other compositions that were isolations of the side of the barn where the window can be seen under the shelter. These were more or less experiments that I didn’t really like when I got them home.
I think back on how many times I’ve driven down this road over the last five years that Toni and I have lived here and wonder how I’ve missed this time and time again. For whatever reason, it was meant for me to find it and shoot it today. While I only got a single photo of it, I am very happy with how it turned out and feel enriched for the history that I now know of it. This was truly a special stop for me and I’m so glad that I took the chance to get the permission to get closer to it.
After another 19 frames shot, I decided that I was ready to move on. Well, the neighbor that lived in the house at the end of the long driveway might have had a part in convincing me that it was time to head on. I didn’t realize that I was blocking the driveway to a different house when I parked. Seeing the difficulties that they had getting around me, I decided that I needed to get out of the way. I had plenty of photographs of the cannery, so I wasn’t upset in the slightest to be on my way.
Looking at the weather, it appeared that there was rain falling in the area, but apparently it was too dry for it to make it to ground level. Not wanting to get caught in a downpour, I decided to head on home with my 32 frames. However, as I got closer to home, I decided that it looked like I might have time to shoot one more subject. A friend of mind had sent a photo of a ’56 Chevy that he found online with an address which was just a few miles from the house. I had not been by there yet because the road was very tight, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to find along what looked to be a driveway. I wanted to wait until the light was good for working the car before I went for an ask. The lighting was good for what I would want to do with the car, so I figured now was as good a time as any to go and see if it was still there.
The further I got down the road, the sketchier it became. I might have been worried had it not been for the Watauga County Sheriff’s patrol car parked at one of the earlier homes. If law enforcement lived here, it can’t be that bad. I kept my eyes peeled for the car but could find no trace of it. There were a few other potential subjects, but the surroundings were not really good for photos. At the house where the car was supposed to be, I saw nothing at all except for a lot of “No Trespassing” signs. Not wanting to overstay my welcome or disturb anyone, I found a place to get turned around and exited the neighborhood.
That was the end of the trek, and I turned my direction to home before the rain hit. I think I beat it by 30 minutes, and it has been raining ever since. No doubt about it, I timed this trek just about perfectly for the weather. I’m also happy to report that even with an extended time in front of the computer, I was able to get completely done with this trek and blog entry before dinner time. That has become a luxury for me with so many treks bringing about multiple-part blog entries with a dozen or more photos to share. This one was about perfect in time and number of photos added. The fact that I got a bit of a history lesson during it was the icing on the cake for sure.
I hope that you have enjoyed the trek and the photos. I appreciate you for joining me along through this narrative of events. While these will always serve mostly as my dear diary entries so that I can remember how the treks went, you can’t understand how nice it feels to know that people are reading through these entries with real interest. It is very flattering, and I am humbled that so many enjoy reading what I write for these entries.
Thank you for being there and for supporting my photography…and writing.
Until next time…
