My wife and I drove for four hours in a steady to light rain from our home in Ohio on our way to Virginia’s Shenandoah’s Valley. We never saw the sun. We passed through Judy Gap, West Virginia, a low spot in the razorback ridge of the nearly vertical Tuscarora quartzite outcropping, and started up yet another mountain pass. As we rounded a curve, this country chapel stood, basking in the bright sunshine that had broken through the heavy cloud cover.
The contrast between the little church’s illuminated white paint, silver roof, and the dark clouds in the background made this week’s Photo of the Week selection easy. “Country chapel” is it.
I was fortunate to tag along with Penny Diggs and her daughter, Sandy Strouse, both of Seaford, VA, recently as they toured Ohio’s Amish country. Penny had won the Lehman’s Sweepstakes earlier in the year and chose to visit over Thanksgiving. Her prize included tours of the five businesses of the Best of Ohio’s Amish Country marketing coop group. Company owners led most of the tours. I took this photo in Kidron, OH at the conclusion of the tour of Lehman’s, led by founder, Jay Lehman, and Glenda Lehman Ervin, Vice President of Marketing for Lehman’s.
Penny didn’t leave her southern hospitality at home either. She was so excited and appreciative about winning that she brought gifts for some of Lehman’s staff.
Penny was describing all that she had experienced to an interviewer when I captured this moment. The expression in her eyes, plus the joy sparkling from her adoring daughter, was an easy pick for my Photo of the Week. “The eyes have it” indeed.
When I hear that distinctive, penetrating squawk outside, I usually grab my camera and head to a window at the rear of our home in Ohio’s Amish country. A Pileated Woodpecker, or maybe two, is brashly announcing its arrival. As a birder, I have been fortunate to have Ohio’s largest woodpeckers coming to the feeder regularly year-round. They especially frequent the feeder in the summer when the parents bring a juvenile to the peanut butter suet feeder that hangs from the backyard sugar maple tree.
I have had all three birds near the feeder at the same time, but never on the feeder simultaneously. As you can see, I can no longer say that.
When I glanced out a window recently after hearing that call, I was pleasantly surprised to see both the male and the female on the feeder opposite one another. Even as an average birder, I knew this was a very rare event. Most birders long to even see a Pileated Woodpecker, much less have them as a yard bird. Pileateds are normally shy birds that keep to the deep woods. Why this pair feels safe in visiting my backyard, I don’t know. I’m just glad they do. I know I was extremely fortunate to have both the male and the female together in the same photo.
The red bricks of this abandoned one room school a few miles from my home stood in sharp contrast to the season’s first snowfall. Long since closed, this little red brick school once served as the incubator for future lawyers, farmers, housewives, teachers and business owners.
The outhouse on the right also played an important part in the school’s history. Right after World War II, the students gathered in the morning for class, but their usually prompt teacher wasn’t in the building. After several minutes, the oldest student, an eighth grader, went looking for the teacher, and found him sitting in the privy dead.
I always think of that story when I pass by the old Beechvale School. “Little red schoolhouse” is my Photo of the Week.
Though the leaves had already reached their peak when I shot this scene, the setting sun’s radiance illuminated those leaves that remained. I was also amazed at how the low angle of the fleeting light bathed this Amish farmstead set in one of the many valleys in Holmes County, Ohio.
On a recent, all too short visit to Sarasota, Florida, I was fortunate to catch this Sandwich Tern on a post in a marina in Longboat Key. The tern looks like it is ready for lift off, but the exquisite bird was only stretching its wings.
I thought the back lighting of the late afternoon sun really highlighted this bird’s beautiful winter plumage, and its distinguishing yellow tip of its bill. Not only that, it was a “lifer” bird for me, meaning I had never seen one before. Sandwich Terns seldom venture into the hills of Ohio’s Amish country, where I live. They tend to stick to the east coast, and especially enjoy Florida’s lovely coastlines.
Photography keeps you on your toes. It enables you to always be on the lookout for that unexpected moment in time that will change in an instant. It forces you to focus on what’s right in front of you when you really intended to capture something else.
Such was my situation on the evening of Oct. 23, when we could view the beginning of a partial solar eclipse just before sunset. An Amish friend of mine, who is a real stargazer, invited me to watch the partial eclipse with him. I picked him up at his home near Charm, Ohio, and we drove a half mile up to the top of a ridge where a long limestone driveway wound down to an Amish farm. Three strands of barbed wire fence kept the livestock in the pasture west of the drive.
While we waited for the eclipse to begin, we tried to stay warm even though the sun shone brightly. Our ridge top viewing spot also exposed us to a persistent and chilly northwest wind. It was the combination of the sun’s slanting rays and the invisible wind that illuminated an amazing phenomenon. The sun exposed hundreds, if not thousands, of spider web strings that blew horizontally away from the barbed wire. Stitched to their barbed wire anchors, the strings glowed like silver thread in the setting sun.
I began clicking away. However, my first few shots were too close to the fence. The webs stretched out so far that they looked like scratches across the digital photo. I stepped to the left, and lowered the camera to capture my Photo of the Week, “Blowing in the wind.”
This time of year, the mixed deciduous leaves in Ohio’s Amish country are at their peak. You might expect me to choose a photo of a pastoral scene of a stand of golden sugar maples, or a treeline of reds, yellows and oranges as my Photo of the Week. Instead, I have selected this simple shot of an older Amish couple slowly walking home on a mid-October Sunday evening.
I was taking landscape photos of the lovely leaves. Near home, I stopped to take a photo of the golden sugar maples at my neighbor’s colonial style farmhouse. As I exited my vehicle, I noticed another neighbor, Christ, walking down the small knoll in front of the home. I respect the Amish desire to not be photographed. So I waited until he would pass. When he reached where I was standing, we began talking as neighbors will do. Soon his wife joined us. He had come to meet her on her usual evening stroll. Christ’s knees no longer allow him to accompany her on the steeper hills his wife walks.
I told them that I wanted to take a picture of the Kaufman house with the trees so nicely brightened by the evening sun, but that I had waited until he was no longer in the frame. Christ, who is 82, just smiled and said, “I don’t mind if you take my picture.” So I did, making sure to honor their beliefs by not getting a face shot.
Having this congenial elderly Amish couple in the foreground of the photo opposite the tans of the unharvested soybean field added a touching human element to an already pretty picture. “Walking home” is my Photo of the Week.
My wife and another couple came upon this trio in an old train tunnel in Barnesville, Ohio. Our friends have been life-long train enthusiasts. We were exploring the old downtown in southeastern Ohio when we found this tunnel. As we approached one end of the tunnel, we noticed a young couple posing for a photographer at the other. I couldn’t resist photographing the crisp silhouettes of the three as the photo shoot concluded. I especially liked that the couple held hands.
The changing fall leaves and the afternoon’s diffused light that reflected off of the wetted tunnel wall helped accentuate the three subjects, who were holding a brief conversation as I took their photo. “Tunnel silhouettes” is my Photo of the Week.
In the fall, we are often mesmerised by the colorful leaves of the changing deciduous trees all around us. In our observations, we sometimes forget to look down. I recently spied this lovely groundcover, Plumbago, on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. In the spring and summer, the dainty emerald leaves highlight the petite indigo flowers.
As you can see, as I did, the leaves have turned russet, red and burgundy, while the little flowers continue to bloom. Wouldn’t this make a great jigsaw puzzle?
Roadkill Crossing 
You must be logged in to post a comment.