In March 2013 I had an adventure in the lovely community of Rapidan, Virginia. This is a very historic town that straddles the border of two counties on either side of the Rapidan River. Among other treasures I found here was a caboose. The caboose was badly weathered, sitting on a section of train track near the old Train Station. I learned that this caboose, built in 1922, was moved to Rapidan from the community of Piney River in Nelson County in 1970. I loved photographing this caboose, both from a distance and looking closely at details of the deteriorating wood. The first day I was there, March 23, was a beautiful day with blue skies and green grass. On March 25, it snowed, and I returned to get more images.
The photograph above of the caboose with the train station was entered into the Piedmont Environmental Council’s annual photo contest and won first place in the Community category.
On March 22, 2023, I made a journey to the new home of this caboose. Or, I should say, it’s original home. In 2015, this caboose was returned to Piney River in Nelson County where it was restored. It now resides at the Virginia Blue Ridge Railway Trail, next to the original depot. The walking trail beside the depot was the location of the train tracks. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the original photos were taken almost exactly ten years before these new ones.
By clicking on the first image below you can go to an article about the trail.There is a photograph from 1959 that shows the depot and the train on the tracks. It is quite an interesting article.
You may view photos from Rapidan, including two of the caboose, at my photography show in Stanardsville, Va, April through June 2023.
I recently decided to start another project for an exhibit I will hang in the fall. Trees came to mind, because I photograph them often, and some of them have great stories. So, I am going to give you a preview of my plan.
The first tree that came to mind is one I photographed a number of years ago. The shot was taken at sunset, facing the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Yes, the tree was dead. But it had a history that it could have told if it had been alive. I had to rely on the memories of local folks who know its significance.
It is located on what is known in Greene County as the Parrott Farm. At the site of the tree was a one-room schoolhouse where the Parrott children and others from nearby homes were educated in the early 1900s. The locals refer to this as the Schoolhouse Field. Two months after I made this image, a large storm blew it down. Here is what remained.
Not far from this location is Westover United Methodist Church on land which was donated by the Parrott/Early families who owned the farm. In 1913, the first wedding took place in that newly created church. After the ceremony the bride took a sprig of hemlock out of her bouquet and planted it in the ground behind the church. This Old Hemlock grew and remains on the property.
Another notable tree was new to me this past year. On a property now owned by Spring Hill Church, which is in Albemarle County, near the Greene County line, there was a tree that grew from a number of shoots, forming an interesing multi-trunked base. It was located near a resting place of the former owners of the farm, now donated to the church.
Not long after I made this image, a microburst, as described by nearby residents, split this tree in half. You can see the multiple trunks that created one tree, but which also led to instability in the storm. It was a big loss to the folks of this church who use this property for spiritual and recreational activities.
More on trees at another time. I wish I knew all of their stories.
I had a photography project in mind as I prepared for an upcoming show with my artists’ group. How about photographing a small town near my home and putting the images in an old window instead of in frames? I headed out early one morning to start gathering the images. There are a lot of quaint older buildings in this town, many of which are empty, and I had no trouble finding some I wanted to document. A beautiful old hotel with balconies and interesting stairs caught my eye. But, then, the scourge of photographers appeared in my viewfinder…..power lines.
Small towns have a lot of power lines. Big power lines, little power lines that are crisscrossing the street and each other. Now I have a problem. I cannot photograph these beautiful buildings without having a power line in each shot. Here’s what I was seeing.
But, as luck would have it, as I walked and shot, going down the street on one side and returning on the other, I started seeing reflections in the windows along Main Street. Beautiful reflections, distortions of reflections, and distortions in the old glass. You can even see distorted face shapes in these windows.
So, I kept shooting, excited about what I was seeing and how I could use them in my art piece. This is the result of many hours of shooting, planning, re-sizing, moving images around, printing more images to try out, on and on. I like it.
I had an earlier post about trees, and today I want to add some other trees here. In the past couple of weeks, two trees on a local golf course had to be removed. People have noticed those trees through the years because of their prominence beside a road that goes along that hole. I have photographed those trees several times, since I have an obsession about trees….or had you noticed? These two trees survived a hurricane event in 2004 that included two tornadoes that touched down on that course. They took out over 250 trees, but these two made it. I’m sorry they are gone now, but I have the memories safe in photographs.
There is another special tree on the golf course that is still standing and I hope it will be with us a lot longer. It is huge. It sits in an area where golfers will not drive a ball into it. It has been the location for many breakfasts, hosted by my friend Steve Lawson, who left us last May 2023. Golfers would meet there, have breakfast on the picnic tables and then head out to play. This one is a beauty.
There are other trees in the golf course that are just plain beautiful. And, there are many that were planted in 2005 to replace those lost in the storms the previous fall. The entrance road to the course is lined with Willow Oaks, Kousa Dogwoods, and Golden Raintree (Koeluteria), where once there had been pines. In the fall they make a statement. Enjoy all the trees that I so treasure.
I learned about a new way to present photographs at an art exhibition at the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg, Va a few years ago. It is woven photography. The artist that was in that show had 3D woven photographs, in which he wove small wire into the piece so that he could make a vessel that could be shaped and could stand alone. He had a very interesting piece in that show. I contacted him and he most generously gave me all kinds of information about how it is done. I learned along the way that there is no harm in sharing that information, because each photographer who uses this technique would use their own images, their own weaving patterns, and their own ideas of how to modify one image in two ways to weave them together. I have learned a lot of things since I first started doing this. Some images work better than others, there are several weaving patterns someone could use, and weaving as a left-hander makes my weavings unique to me. Here are some examples of the work I’ve done, and I hope you can see a progression in my choices of photos along the way.
Let me explain what I actually do. I print two of the same image, with or without modifications in one of the images. I also print on the back of each image a cutting template, one with 1/4″ wide horizontal cutting lines and one with 1/4″ vertical lines, then I cut the images apart. On the horizontal cut, I leave a bit uncut at the top of the image to hold the pieces together. The vertical pieces are cut one at a time, and woven into the horizontally cut image.
This was the first image I created when I started in 2018. I wove together two black and white images with a simple tabby pattern. I put it in an art show in Bath County that year and it sold, so I only have this photo now. You can see the simple in and out pattern of the weaving, alternating the starting point on each row.
A year later I made this piece, using a twill weave. In that pattern you start with one under, then two over, two under, continuing throughout the row. The next row begins with two under, two over, two under, and so forth. I used one black and white image and one color image on this corrugated metal barn photo. You can see the twill pattern quite easily because of the color differences. Because I am left-handed, the “stripes” run in a left-to-right diagonal pattern.
This was made using two 5×7 photos, one darker than the other, but both in color. Again, you can see the diagonal movement because of the twill weave. These stripes look larger because the image is smaller. I called this one Quilted Landscape because I think the stripes in the green area look like a quilt lying on the ground. This one sold about a month after I finished it.
I chose to do this image again, this time without as much difference in the saturation of color. I called the new one Storm Coming In, and it will be in the Bath County Arts Association Show this summer. I do not have a good photograph of this one because of reflections on the glass.
My next attempt was with a photograph of a bright orange maple tree in Shenandoah National Park. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. Before I completed it I showed it to a couple of friends and they both wanted to purchase it, so I will be making a second one of this image soon. It is not framed yet, and the photograph was taken with my phone as it lay on a counter. Sorry. I’ll try to put a better photo up after I get it completed. My goal will be to make changes somehow so the second one is not exactly like the first. We’ll see what I come up with. Enjoy!!
Today I want to share my American Chestnut photos. American Chestnuts are rare today, having almost been decimated by the Chestnut Blight in the early part of the 20th Century. The blight, a fungal disease, was introduced into this country on a Chinese Chestnut tree brought into the Bronx in 1904. By 1906, 98% of the chestnuts in the Bronx were infected.
Over 100 years ago there were 4 billion chestnut trees in the U.S., many of them in the northeastern states. Within 40 years the trees disappeared. The loss of the American Chestnut was devastating to U.S. economy. It was used for building, furniture, fencing, and the nuts were food for wildlife and humans alike.
These photos of an American Chestnut were taken a couple of years ago in Virginia. I was with a member of the American Chestnut Foundation who had learned of the existence of a couple of small American Chestnuts. The trees were small and are being watched carefully members of the ACF.
American Chestnut Tree
Last June I visited a friend in Belgium who had a European Chestnut on the property where she and her husband were living. There is a huge difference between what I saw there and what I saw in Virginia. This is a healthy group of three trees with new growth and abundant chestnuts on the ground.
In Virginia, the Blue Ridge Parkway has split rail fences, many of them of chestnut wood. Old homesteads were built of chestnut logs, and in my own childhood home, there was a room with wormy chestnut paneling, virtually non-existent today. What a loss.
We meet weekly, and host: Review & Critique of New Works. Our Annual Spring Show is in May and our Annual Fall Show is September - October. Contact: Trish Crowe 540 948 3079
Patricia Temples Photography 