Photographic Hindsight

Scrolling through photos I've taken over the years, I am struck once again at how often we return to the same or similar views or things.  People who take photographs for the love of immortalizing family have one viewpoint and those who take photographs for the love of the camera's eye have another.  And of course, it is possible to love both. 

 

Anyway, the photos I was looking at showed numerous barns (some from an expedition with Est that focused on these buildings), the lake we love so much, and one other subject-type best described as whimsy.  Here are a very few to illustrate what I mean about my joys:

This picture of a barn fits two categories: barns and whimsy.  The barn isn't beautiful, but I love the weathered barn siding and the scruffy look of the attached shed.  Well-tended grass and then the weeds at the corners of these "out buildings" are another particular pleasure for me.  Then there's the whimsy; the For Rent sign made it appear that it was the barn that was for rent instead of the farmhouse that is out of the camera's line of sight. (Sorry about the color mishap here - technology running on its own view of how things should be.)
 

Now this barn isn't terrifically unusual or of noteworthy beauty either, but it is a solid, working barn that is in use every day.  It is a functional building.  What delighted me were the carefully tended shrubs in front of this barn and the whetstone in the foreground.  It is a good reference photograph for some time in the future when I might wish to put such a building in a painting. 

Reference photography could be called another category now that I think of it.  Heaven knows I take enough picture "just in case"!

 

 

Finally, another bit of whimsy which includes immortalizing family and my love affair with barns.  This is the "hindsight" part of this entry.  I have discovered that I really enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures.  Especially if it is a family member who is an especially fine photographer and water colorist.  It's sort of a, "What is she seeing that I missed?  Should I move to where she is?  Maybe this view will turn up in a painting of hers and I can show her the moment she recorded this scene."  Since both of us tend to take numerous shots of the same subject from different perspectives, I'll never know if she took one from my vantage point because I did, or whether I've merely picked up her artist's eye in this one.  Whichever it might be, it's a shot I love.

This picture of a barn fits two categories: barns and whimsy.  The barn isn't beautiful, but I love the weathered barn siding and the scruffy look of the attached shed.  Well-tended grass and then the weeds at the corners of these "out buildings" are another particular pleasure for me.  Then there's the whimsy; the For Rent sign made it appear that it was the barn that was for rent instead of the farmhouse that is out of the camera's line of sight.