Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A stack of hay bales painted to look like the comic book hero Captain America. They were on US-33, just north of Cook Road, just outside the city of Fort Wayne in Allen County, Indiana.​

A plywood arm points to a banner that says: "Come Visit Kuehnert Dairy Farm in October." According to the sign, the farm was having a fall festival featuring robotic milking machines, a corn maze, a straw mountain, hayrides, pumpkins, baby calves, and farm tours.​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Pletcher Cemetery is a small 19th Century cemetery on the west side of Elkhart Street (County Road 3), just north of Railroad Street, in the small town of Wakarusa, Indiana. The cemetery's sign says that it was founded in 1854. The newest gravestone that I saw was from the 1890s.​

Many of the people buried there were men who died while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Someone is still putting small American flags on the graves of those soldiers, 152 years after the war ended!​

The flags were mounted on metal stars placed by the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans group for Union Army soldiers that was founded after the Civil War.​

 

[fireblade]

I'm with jsrockit, great thread.
Enjoyable to continually see a part of a country which i will never visit.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This old brick building is on State Road 1 in the small town of Spencerville, Indiana. It was originally a bank, and still has the gable stone above the door that says, simply: "Bank."​

The this building, and the 1917 Building next door, are home to a business called Agra Warehouse.​

 

[dave lackey]

This old brick building is on State Road 1 in the small town of Spencerville, Indiana. It was originally a bank, and still has the gable stone above the door that says, simply: "Bank."​

The this building, and the 1917 Building next door, are home to a business called Agra Warehouse.​

Nice! Chris, your work has just gotten through my thick head as inspiration.

For the last several months I have added yet more projects into my busy life as a full-time caregiver. I have been working on research and documenting my mother's side of the family since my sister gave me her handwritten manuscripts of poems. Two books later, numerous day trips to find the old farm and boxes all over my Leica Cave tables, I just realized I need to shoot similar work in my mother's hometowns where she lived in Alabama and Georgia.

Thank you for the inspiration to think of doing that.

I am confident your images will make a difference in someone's life with ties to Fort Wayne. It is a noble project.

 

[dave lackey]

Oh, yes, I really like that photo with the color, texture and detail.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The bench at Little Shop of Laura's being repainted last year.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Nice! Chris, your work has just gotten through my thick head as inspiration.

For the last several months I have added yet more projects into my busy life as a full-time caregiver. I have been working on research and documenting my mother's side of the family since my sister gave me her handwritten manuscripts of poems. Two books later, numerous day trips to find the old farm and boxes all over my Leica Cave tables, I just realized I need to shoot similar work in my mother's hometowns where she lived in Alabama and Georgia.

Thank you for the inspiration to think of doing that.

I am confident your images will make a difference in someone's life with ties to Fort Wayne. It is a noble project.

You should do that, Dave. I saw another RFF thread where you are shooting a Hasselblad now. That's a great system for this kind of documentary work. I sold mine for a Mamiya 6 because my health issues made it too hard to carry the weight of the Hassy, but I did some great work with it for many years.

You've got the right gear and an idea, now you need to get out and burn some film!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Built in 1915, the Haugk Building is a beautiful old commercial building on Madison Street, across from the Adams County Courthouse, in the small town of Decatur, Indiana.​

The first floor of the building is a storefront church called Living Word Temple.

I photographed it Thursday evening.
​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This tire swing hangs from a tree in front of a house on the east side of O’Day Road, between Arcola Road and Yellow River Road, in rural Allen County, Indiana.​

The house the tree stands in front of is a modest house; but the neighboring house to the north, seen in the background of my photos, is a godawful Mini-Mansion that is under construction and nearing completion.​

A lot of these houses are being built on rural farmland around Fort Wayne. The tire swing is a common sight in the front yards of farmhouses in Indiana.

I photographed it two weeks ago, near sunset.
​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A portrait I made of my son a couple days ago. He'll be 20 years old in a couple weeks!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This tree with no bark is on the east side of Arbor Avenue, south of Sandpoint Road, in my neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is a closeup view of the trunk, but the entire tree is barkless.

I photographed it a couple weeks ago.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The American flag leaned against the tree is a wooden pallet with the flag painted on it. Pallet flags have become a very popular form of folk art in Indiana.​

This place is on O’Day Road, north of Washington Center Road, in rural northwest Allen County, Indiana. Snow was falling while I was photographing it on this mid-March evening.​

I made my first photographs of this place four months earlier, in November, 2016.​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Gene's Camera Store is on Main Street in Mishawaka, Indiana. Small town camera shops are rapidly disappearing all over the United States due to competition from big online stores. Even in large cities, many camera stores are struggling to stay open.​

Indiana still has a number of locally owned camera stores that have managed to survive. Gene's also has a larger store in nearby South Bend, Indiana's fourth largest city.​

 

[dave lackey]

Yep, nice thread and inspiring. I will soon be traveling to my grandparents last home in Woodland where they have been laid to rest (70 years ago). My trips this year have been part of an adventure for my sister and for me. I am writing a book about it, entitled "In Search of..." and I will publish it as soon as I get back down there and photograph the quaint little town.

Thanks to you, Chris, for inspiring me. The 503cxi will be exercised a lot during the month of April!🙂

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yep, nice thread and inspiring. I will soon be traveling to my grandparents last home in Woodland where they have been laid to rest (70 years ago). My trips this year have been part of an adventure for my sister and for me. I am writing a book about it, entitled "In Search of..." and I will publish it as soon as I get back down there and photograph the quaint little town.

Thanks to you, Chris, for inspiring me. The 503cxi will be exercised a lot during the month of April!🙂

Awesome! Can't wait to see the photos.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This beautiful old commercial building is on Market Street (US-6) in the small town of Nappanee, Indiana. It now sits vacant, but was formerly the home of a store called Martin's Do It Best Hardware.​

The object sitting on the sidewalk in front of the building is a large fiberglass apple. There are others like it, each painted differently, all over Nappanee.​

Many cities and towns have done public art projects like this. Identical fiberglass statues of an animal are given to local artists to decorate. Local businesses pay for them, and the completed animals are displayed in front of the sponsoring businesses.​

In most places, an animal, like a bull or a horse is used. Nappanee used apples, the only fruit that I have seen.​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This house is on Main Street, next to Wolf Lake Elementary School, in the small town of Wolf Lake, Indiana. The entire yard, front and back, and both sides, was covered in inflatable Christmas decorations.​

This is the front yard, which has less space than the back yard due to the house being close to the road.​

The old woman who lives here told me that she did not know how many inflatables she had on display. She mentioned that she had even more that she had not put out yet because she had gotten a cold while setting up the ones in my photos!​

I photographed them in the evening, near dusk.​

 

[robert blu]

This tree with no bark is on the east side of Arbor Avenue, south of Sandpoint Road, in my neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is a closeup view of the trunk, but the entire tree is barkless.

I photographed it a couple weeks ago.

Love the graphic look in this photo Chris, that blue triangle makes a great effect!
robert

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This shelf full of old oil cans and bottles of automotive fluids is on the back wall of my garage. My house was my grandparents' old house, in the neighborhood in Fort Wayne where I grew up. My parents still live in the house I grew up in, just around the block from where I live now.​

My grandpa, John Westerfield, died in 1999. I don't think my grandma moved any of this stuff in the 15 years that she lived in the house after he passed away! I've been living there for a few years now, and I haven't touched any of it either.​