Here is another image from our trip to my husband’s grandparents’ farm community in rural Kansas.
Main Street USA
Vintage
I enjoyed a presentation by Hazel Meredith last night at our camera club, so I used some of her techniques in Topaz Studio 2 to edit this rural scene shot in Alaska last summer.
Neigh
We encountered some friendly horses on our drive through Skull Valley last week. I’m not a farm girl by any description, but there is just something so appealing about rural scenes like this.
Til the Cows Come Home
This is a re-edit of a photo from 2014. I have such clear memories of that drive through Paradise Valley in Montana with Lonnie and our grandson, Miles. It was such a beautiful day, and five year old Miles was totally involved in spotting old barns and picturesque country scenes for me to photograph. In this reimagining, I aged the mailboxes to make the image match how I was seeing them that day. I remember noticing the cows coming along as I snapped the photo, but didn’t stay to see if they stopped or turned off before they came to the road.
Heading Home
We pulled over to capture this cheerful scene on the way home from a drive on the backroads.
In the Country
A peaceful, bucolic scene in Skull Valley with several of my favorite photo elements: a country road, a fence, a cow, and a windmill!
Leading the Way
Yes, we took another drive!
Above the Clouds
Stop the presses! We got out of Prescott! The drive was only 17 miles or so, but we did get out of town. The impetus was that my photo group is meeting tomorrow on zoom- and the topic is “How Far Have You Gone”- meaning how far have you travelled during the pandemic. Until this weekend, my answer would have been all the way to the doctor’s office. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one in the group who is staying home most of the time- but I just didn’t feel like bringing a still life or flower photo (although I will later on).
So we drove through Skull Valley and Kirkland, and I found three photo ops along the way. Today’s photo is one I took on the way home- I’ll post the one I am using for class later on.
On the Farm
I’ve been revisiting and editing older photos since we started staying at home during the “new normal”. I’m getting the itch to go out and shoot some new photos, but realize that for now any new photos will likely be limited to flowers, still life and maybe a hummingbird if I’m lucky.
I was so happy to find this image from last years stay at the lavender farm in New Mexico. I have a great love for photographing barns and silos and don’t get the opportunity too often. So actually staying on a lavender farm and having the time to wander around with my camera was heaven!
Country Store Window
taken at the lavender farm in Albuquerque
Overgrown
Summer weeds have dried and almost overtaken this fence along the Peavine Trail.
Windmill Whirrrr
Different windmill- same day.
Rudy suggested I slow down my shutter to capture the motion of the blades- I like the effect! This is something Tom (my photo teacher) says to do with helicopters and propellers. Why have I never made that connection?
Bucolic
bu·col·ic
adjective
1. of or relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life.
Shot at the community garden by Joe’s Farm Grill
By the Gate
This little gate caught my eye as we were walking to the petroglyph site the other day.
Heartland- DONE!
It started a year ago on a road trip to Kansas to visit Lonnie’s father. I became obsessed with the seemingly endless flat horizons of Kansas, broken only by the occasional barn or silo. There is a beauty in this stark landscape with the wheat fields, the barb wire fences, and the oddly industrial look of modern farms. I took photo after photo with my iPhone (usually through the window as we drove along), and I had fun editing them right there in the car. May’s road trip was melancholy, however, as we drove across the plains knowing that Lonnie’s dad had just died. This time I took photos with my Nikon often with the lensbaby attached- mostly from the car at 70mph. I was still obsessed with the landscape, but I also wondered each time I clicked the shutter when we would be driving these roads again.
In my AAUW photography group, we are asked to commit to a long term project of some sort. After our trip a year ago, I decided to create a Heartland series for the assignment.
When I traveled to Yellowstone last month, I took these photos with me on a little external drive to work on; I was planning to make a photo book to take to my photography group. I worked on it during a couple evenings after the kids were in bed, but I could never get the book to save- it would always say it was still uploading! I didn’t have the time or energy for a frustrating computer project, so I decided to abandon it until I came home. Once home, I sat down to work on the project again, only to discover that, no matter what I did, Lightroom would not recognize the photos. I know all about moving photos from within Lightroom and have never had an issue with it until NOW. I could see the photos on my drive and could open them from Photoshop, but they were invisible to Lightroom. There were several attempts over period of days- but then I abandoned the project once more. I sat down one last time to try again yesterday- and there they were! Right there in the Lightroom catalog- not grayed out- not missing, just THERE! I may or may not print them. I’m a bit sick of them right now- so much for the obsession!
So I decided that they will at least appear on the blog as a slideshow before they disappear again. Many of these photos have already appeared on this blog- but here they are again- all together!
Editing notes: to bring some cohesiveness to the project I re-edited all the images and added textures (usually scratchy ones).
melinda anderson photography 