Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

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!

Very true; the sky is, I think, the most important part of a work of art involving a landscape. True for paintings, photographs, and drawings. The artistry in landscape photography comes from waiting for the right conditions (light, the sky, weather, etc). That is true of any photography that isn't staged (like studio work). A painter can paint anything he can imagine without any reference to the real world. We cannot do that; we need reality as a basis for our work. We are choose something that exists in the world and edit it by choosing the time and place to photograph it, the composition, and the color/contrast/tonality that will be used to portray it.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

How many times have I stood shivering in the bitter cold, waiting for that cloud to move over there, fingers and toes numb. Then, of course, the cloud doesn't move over there.
But every so often, the photography gods take pity and it all falls into place, and the cloud obeys my commands. Then all the numb toes seem worth it!
So how boring would it be if we always got the shot we set out to get?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

How many times have I stood shivering in the bitter cold, waiting for that cloud to move over there, fingers and toes numb. Then, of course, the cloud doesn't move over there.
But every so often, the photography gods take pity and it all falls into place, and the cloud obeys my commands. Then all the numb toes seem worth it!
So how boring would it be if we always got the shot we set out to get?

I've done the same thing. Something else I do is that I keep notes of places I see that look interesting. If the weather or light is not good when I discover the subject, I note the location and go back another time.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Women kayaking on the Saint Marys River at Promenade Park in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was on the evening of July 4th, near the end of the day. A lot of people were on the river waiting for the fireworks to begin. The company renting the kayaks gave people headlamps to wear, though all of the kayakers returned to dry land when it got dark.


Promenade Park opened in the summer of 2019 on the banks of the Saint Marys River, just west of Headwaters Park, as part of Fort Wayne's efforts to develop the areas around the three rivers that converge in the city. The Saint Marys River and Saint Joseph River come together on the east side of downtown to form the Maumee River, which empties into Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Patriotic decorations in the front window of Doc's Hardware store on Main Street (US-33) in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. I photographed it a couple nights after the Fourth of July holiday.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A woman looking at her cellphone walks past Foundations Christian Center, a church located in an imposing-looking old former bank building on the north side of Market Street, between Main Street (State Road 1) and Johnson Street, in the small town of Bluffton, Indiana.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Another photo of Dwayne's Vac & Sew.



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.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I was mowing my yard a few days ago when I saw this monarch butterfly flying around me. First one I have seen in years; they used to be common here when I was a kid.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Abstract photograph of the sky that I made at sunset a few days ago.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I found this patriotic pickup truck in a yard on Washington Street in the very small town of Maples, Indiana. It is a Chevrolet S-10 painted like the American flag. The truck's hood is covered by a picture of bald eagles and American flags.


The town of Maples, located in southeast Allen County, only has six streets! There is a grain elevator, a Methodist church, and a bar.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Classic S-10! Awesome!

 

[Michael Markey]

Nice shot Chris .....

 

[Retro-Grouch]

I notice the all-American truck has a flat tire. Sadly, an unintended metaphor...

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I made this abstract photograph of the sky this morning over my house in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The sky was full of contrails from passing airplanes. My house is just a couple miles north of Fort Wayne International Airport, so I see a lot of air traffic over the neighborhood.

 

[farlymac]

Abstract photograph of the sky that I made at sunset a few days ago.

Not enough people take cloud photos for some reason. I like to take their portraits when they block the light for the shot I'm trying to get on the ground as a form of revenge for doing so.

But I also like them because sometimes, like your image here, they resemble photos of nebulae in outer space. It's amazing to me how something so large (many light years across at times) can be replicated at such a small scale so we can experience them here on Earth.

PF

 

[farlymac]

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.

They really messed up with that stand-alone store philosophy when relocating our local outlet. They could have rented a space four doors down in the shopping center they were located in that would have doubled their size, but no, they bought a lot about 200 yards up the road to put in a new store that is only slightly larger than the one they were renting.

Then it took over five months to drill and blast the new site just to get it down to a level where it would be more visible from the street. Probably cost just as much if not more than what the site sold for.

PF

 

[Retro-Grouch]

"Probably cost just as much if not more than what the site sold for."

How many large corporate entities have any common sense? The word comes down from the top, and IT MUST BE DONE!

 

[ASA 32]

I was mowing my yard a few days ago when I saw this monarch butterfly flying around me. First one I have seen in years; they used to be common here when I was a kid.

I grew up near Lafayette, Indiana, in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Monarch butterflies were everywhere in late summer. So was the milkweed that Monarch larvae fed on. Whenever I return to Indiana I'm amazed at the factory farming that has taken over, and with it, I suspect vast quantities of weed- and insect-killing chemicals. No milkweed, no Monarchs.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A honeybee hard at work gathering pollen on a wild sunflower growing in my front yard in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I made this back in September, 2018. Its one of many photos that were in my huge backlog of work waiting to be edited.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A flower on one of the Rose of Sharon bushes in my front yard in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I photographed it early in the morning when it still had a few drops of rain on the petals from the rain that had fallen during the night.

These bushes were planted many years ago by my grandmother, back when this was my grandparents' house.