Polaroid photograph of a rural landscape on a foggy September morning in northeast Indiana, Indiana. The sun had emerged and broken through the fog, which persisted for a short time after the sun came out.
I photographed this scene looking east on the road that runs along the border between Allen County to the north and Wells County to the south, just east of Smith Road. Allen County calls the road South County Line Road; while Wells County calls it County Road 1200N. The farmhouse in the distance is on the Wells County side.
9-14-22
Wonderful use of Polaroid at its luscious best!
Chris, I continue to be amazed at your skill. I could use some pointers for adjusting exposure on SX70 cameras, other than just burning film randomly. For your outdoor documentary work, do you purposefully avoid harsh lighting conditions by, for example, shooting the shady sides of buildings, or waiting for the Golden Hour? Also, do you employ any filters on your camera?
Keep up the good work!
Perfect. Perfect in every way.
Another smokestack from a defunct company--the factory has long since been torn down.
This reminds me of a dirty joke with the punchline “Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day”. But I won’t repeat it here.
This reminds me of a dirty joke with the punchline “Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day”. But I won’t repeat it here.
Chris, your in-depth knowledge of all these places, along with photos, is fascinating I wish I had a fraction of the knowledge about the places I’ve lived, even though I go through historical society archives and try to absorb as much as I can.
I was born in Fort Wayne and have lived most of my life here. My family has been here a long time, too. The house my son and I live in used to be my grandparents' house; it is the house my mother grew up in. Her parents bought it in 1958, when she was seven years old. My parents live around the block from me in the house they bought a few months before I was born. Aside from a year I spent in Louisville, Kentucky and two years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I have lived all of my life in Fort Wayne. When you're that deeply tied to a city, especially when the city is not a huge one (Ft. Wayne has about 275,000 people), you absorb a lot of knowledge just from being part of the place.
I also talk to people when I'm photographing. When I tell people what I am doing, they usually want to tell me their story or the story of the place I am photographing. You can't get that kind of insider knowledge from a history book, or even a historical society.
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That is certainly true - many people here are relatively new to the area and have little or no knowledge of it; others who have been here longer seem uninterested in its history.
My house and this neighborhood was built in 1994; I’ve owned my house since 1999. To my surprise, there is just one person, a lady in her 80’s, who has lived in the neighborhood longer than I have. Many have moved on; I think most people have been here less than 10 years.
Even when I moved to this neighborhood, I asked my neighbors if anyone had photos of the area. Only one person did - she gave me some photos of the neighborhood and her house as it was being built. Historical (aerial) photos of the area show it as farmland with rural roads. Nice to see that. I try to find landmarks that still exist.
So the question arises: Chris, does your family have photos of the area? Perhaps in the 1950’s?
My family, perhaps like most, only photographed people. I have boxes of photos taken in Budapest and other cities, but they are only of people and it is only chance that a house or building is visible in the background. My grandmother thought it was crazy to make photos of anything other than people.