The Life in My Years

This week John, of Journeys with Johnbo, leads the Lens Artists Photo Challenge with his topic, The Road Most Often Taken. John is speaking metaphorically. He writes, “I want you to think of your favorite type or style of photography as the road you’ve chosen to take most often.”

Quite honestly I’ve been all over the photographic map. Landscape used to be my go to. And then I visited the S.F. Botanical Garden and got hooked on plants (photographically speaking). Then it was urban photography and architecture. Or was it oceanscapes? Then I got buried in cemeteries. My road has more forks than my kitchen drawer.

My current passion is monochrome. Now, whenever I go out and shoot, I do so in color. But I also stop to consider what a shot might look like in black and white or sepia. I might compose a shot a bit differently if I think there’s promise in editing in monochrome. Cemeteries, old buildings, people and relics? I almost always shoot with monochrome in mind.

Places and things left to the whims of time fascinate me. When I’m traveling, I’m always looking out for an old barn, a building in some stage of dilapidation. I’m drawn to the detritus of the ages.

During a road trip in the autumn of 2021, I left Hannibal, Missouri, headed for Springfield, Illinois. I stopped for breakfast in Louisiana, Missouri, on the bank of the Mississippi River. Near the riverbank are the remains of an old ice house. Built in 1924, it burned down eight months before I passed thru town.

Just outside of Virginia City, Nevada (those old enough to remember the old western, Bonanza, will remember Virginia City, and old Sheriff Roy Coffee) are the remains of an old wagon.

Last fall, my wife and I traveled to Bodie, California, a ghost town in the true sense of the term. I posted about Bodie recently. Below are a saloon (on the left) and a barber shop (note the barber pole design on the far right).

I’ve always considered landscapes to be best viewed in vivid colors. Recently I started going through some archives and played with some monochrome editing. Some worked and others not so much. Below are two that I figured were keepers.

 

Almost every portrait or people shot that I take gets edited into black and white.

Portrait includes four legged creatures. The Mudi Dog below has appeared in this space before.

Most of my urban photos were shot in San Francisco.

The photo below was taken in Montreal.

And then there’s just random stuff.

To travel down the roads of other lens artists visit John’s page.