The Barn Series- Day 1 - Manchester Farms

In the beginning, when I started this blog, this was the very first image I posted. An image captured with my old manual Pentax camera, which has long since been retired, using old school Fuji slide film. The camera where I taught myself to shoot the light and how to capture the best perspective and most of all, how to enjoy photographing nature.

The day I photographed this image I hadn't spent much time in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. But in the beginning days as a nature photographer, this was high on my bucket list, the beautiful fields and fence line and horse barns at Manchester Farms in Lexington, Kentucky. I drove the back roads of the Bluegrass Scenic Byway from Midway to Lexington to Manchester Farms. I meandered up and down the road traveling back and forth and stopping at many places to check the perspective I was looking for. I found it and here's the proof. To this day this image is still one of my all time favorite images, if for no other reason, than because it was one of the first ones I truly longed to captured. Lucky me, the thoroughbreds were grazing aimlessly in the fields on this sunny, Summer's day.

If only I had known then just where my travels would take me on this photographic journey, I am sure I would have thought, "no way." Yet, I have traveled thousands of miles all other the north and south and eastern United States capturing scene after scene in all types of weather and in every setting. From fields to forest, from lake shore to sea shore, from quaint Amish farms to gorgeous Bluegrass horse farms, from mountains to valleys. I have traveled in earnest seeking that image. That image that tells the story of why I was there.

I have traveled to Cape Cod and Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, to Mid Coast and Down East in Maine, to the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee, to the tiny shore towns along Michigan's lake shore, to Assateague National Seashore in Maryland to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia, to Gibbs Gardens in Georgia and to Hocking Hills State Park in south central Ohio. Finally, least we forget, I have traveled countless times to visit Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky, to Mustatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in south central Indiana. Both places only a stone's throw away from home. And yes, I have traveled many times along the Bluegrass Scenic Byway, which often referred to as 'my back yard.'

Throughout so many of these journeys there was one image I always stopped and took the time to photograph. Barns. Whether the barn was an old or vintage or dilapidated or, even, brand new. It mattered not to me. I stopped and walk back and forth and looked through my viewfinder for that perspective I so wanted to take away with me before I left that barn to live on in history.

From barns with logos painted on them to barns with quilt placards to barns nearly falling down to barns famous and steeped in history. I captured images of barns. And now I am leaving to take you on an adventure for the next few weeks as I captured barn image after barn image. I'll tell a story and weave a web about history. The only question now is, 'are you coming with me?" ENJOY!

Linking to The Barn Collective and Metamorphosis Monday