Some new photos from Fort Wayne

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This is the fourth of a series of abstract photographs that I made of the sky over my neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
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A Chevrolet Corvette from the early 1980s with a large American flag draped down its back end waits for the beginning of the 2021 Waynedale Memorial Day Parade in the parking lot of Waynedale United Methodist Church. The church is the staging area for the annual parade.


The parade runs north along Old Trail Road, from the church to the Prairie Grove Cemetery, in the Waynedale area of Fort Wayne, Indiana.


Waynedale was a small town until it was annexed by the city of Fort Wayne in 1957. The area still looks like a small town.
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I guess this guy doesn't know that he's got the flag reversed -- the union (portion with the stars) is always top left as you view it.

Another great set of pictures, Chris. Always worth viewing. I am interested in knowing who settled many of these towns originally -- immigrants from specific countries? Wondering if the church architecture is in a style particular to any regions of Europe.
 
Chris, I’m always knocked out by the view camera like precision of your pictures of buildings and interiors. Two tech questions - (1) Do you use the eye level viewfinder or the LCD screen on the back of the camera? (2) Do you use a tripod for those shots?
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
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This window is on the side of First United Methodist Church, located on the corner of Walnut Street and Williams Street in the small town of Bluffton, Indiana. Someone has written "Satan Was Here" on the window!


The graffiti reminded me of a story that my grandpa used to tell. One Sunday when he was a teenager, he and a couple of friends went to a church in Fort Wayne at the invitation of the pastor, who was a neighbor of his. The minister began the service by running around up and down the aisle in the church, shouting and waving his hands. One of the church's regular members told them that the pastor was chasing the devil out, and that he began each service this way! Grandpa noted that the minister at the Lutheran church he normally attended did not have to chase the devil out before the service; and he reasoned that there must be something wrong with a church where that was necessary, since Satan normally wouldn't dare show his face in a church!
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A good photo and interesting story, I agree with your father's thinking :)
 
KoNickon said:
I guess this guy doesn't know that he's got the flag reversed -- the union (portion with the stars) is always top left as you view it.

Another great set of pictures, Chris. Always worth viewing. I am interested in knowing who settled many of these towns originally -- immigrants from specific countries? Wondering if the church architecture is in a style particular to any regions of Europe.
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Most of northern Indiana was settled in large part by Germans. I don't know about the small towns, but Fort Wayne's history I can tell you. Fort Wayne was founded at the location of a Miami Indian town called Kekionga, which was the capital of the Miami Confederacy, which controlled most of northern Indiana and northwest Ohio from the late 1600s to the early 1800s.


The first whites were French traders who came in the late 1600s and formed close bonds with the tribe, learning their language and intermarrying with them. The influence of the French can be seen in the fact that the tribe's chief in the early 1800s was named Jean-Baptiste de Richardville. By the 1820s, Chief Richardville was the wealthiest man in Indiana! His house still stands in the Wayendale area of Fort Wayne; it is the oldest building in the city and is now a museum.


After the American Revolution, the US government fought several wars against the Miami. After defeating them in 1794, General Anthony Wayne ordered a fort to be built at Kekionga. The construction of Fort Wayne is considered the founding date of the city that began to grow up around the fort.


In the early 19th Century, huge numbers of Germans came to the US, most settling in the Midwest. Fort Wayne came to be so dominated by Germans that the city's newspapers were published in German until the First World War, when they switched to English. Fort Wayne has a number of large 19th Century brick churches, all of them either Lutheran or Roman Catholic and all built by Germans. Even today, most of the white people here are of German ancestry.






Bill Pierce said:
Chris, I’m always knocked out by the view camera like precision of your pictures of buildings and interiors. Two tech questions - (1) Do you use the eye level viewfinder or the LCD screen on the back of the camera? (2) Do you use a tripod for those shots?
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I use the viewfinder. I can't hold the camera steady enough with my arms outstretched to use the LCD unless I use a tripod, and even then I find it hard to see well in bright light.


I use a tripod for landscape photos, but my documentary stuff is almost all handheld. I correct perspective, view-camera-like, using Lightroom's perspective correction tools. I do that for both my digital work and my film work (I scan my film).
 
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Dollar General is a large American retail chain that specializes in selling inexpensive food and household items. Most of them are located in stand-alone buildings on the outskirts of small towns or in impoverished areas of large cities. This one is unusual in that is it located in a storefront in the 'downtown' business district of a small town. The store is on Market Street, west of Main Street (State Road 1), in Bluffton, Indiana.


The building has an interesting history. Barely visible at the top of the facade is engraved lettering that says: "Home of Morris Stores." Morris 5 & 10 Stores was a variety store chain founded in Bluffton in 1903. At its peak, Morris had seventy-one locations in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. The company was bought by another Midwestern variety store chain, G.C. Murphy, in 1951.
 
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Dwayne's Vac and Sew is a sewing machine and vacuum cleaner store in an old storefront on the corner of Market Street and Main Street (State Road 1) in the small town of Bluffton, Indiana. This is the store's front windows, on Market Street side of the building.

Old sewing machines and sweepers are on display in the windows, and a neon American flag is visible on a wall inside the store.
 
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This old farmhouse was on Lower Huntington Road, just northeast of the intersection of Lower Huntington and Airport Expressway in southeast Allen County, Indiana. Several silos stood behind the house and there used to be a bunch of old derelict cars and trucks in the yard.

The house was demolished in January, 2021. They knocked down the walls and let the intact roof fall on the ground! I photographed this place several times over the years after it was abandoned. I made this photo last week.
 
Love the transition * of the colours from the left bottom corner to the top right corner, love the intensity of the blue.

* I'm not sure it is the correct word but I do not find a btter one, sorry.
 
John Constable, the preeminent English landscape painter of the Romantic period, referred to the function of the sky in a painting as "the chief organ of sentiment". It's a delightful phrase, and encourages us to think of a painting as almost a living thing! I keep the thought in mind when shooting, and have repeatedly found that, in my landscapes, what is going on above the horizon is at least as important as what's below. Sometimes the sky echoes the feeling of the land, sometimes it's in contrast and offers a sort of commentary.
Your photos of the sky alone have, in a sense, become pure sentiment. I would be hard-pressed to articulate the sentiment exactly, but I definitely do respond! Thank you!
 
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