A bell that tolls no more.

An old church and bell near Astoria, Oregon.

You see them in little towns and alone on the prairies.  They are a testament to distant times when the community would unite in faith, in hope, and in times of despair.  As a legacy, all that remains is a stain upon the landscape.  The parishioners have long since vanished, being survived by a new generation which has forgotten their value.

The country church is what I am speaking of.  In many ways, they share the heritage of grain elevators and one room school houses.  A part of our history, vital then to the life of the population; now it stands idly by, waiting for rust and rot to finish the desecration beset upon it.  What has happened that this, the once lifeblood of society, has crumbled into its decayed state?

The answer is multifaceted, as time has changed the land and the people with it.  Populations become less rural and move to urban centers.  Farming has changed from many members driving horses to a few large landowners driving massive farm vehicles.  The protestant immigrants of the day have been usurped by multiculturalism; many faiths with diverse needs have rendered these edifices moot.  Then too there is the gradual erosion of faith.  With each successive generation, there is a decrease in the portion that believes in the God that created them.  All together these events have decreed their sentence and past judgment.

Yet, the history remains.  It is because the founding fathers had faith, they built the churches.  These buildings helped the communities they were a part of, bringing people together who needed their faith as much as they needed each other.  These buildings still stand proud, in spite of their impending doom, because of the contribution they have made.  Yes, ours would have been a totally different country if their silhouettes had not been so prominent.  Although their bells are silent now, the gongs of the past resonate with present and future generations for the foundations that were laid. 

Expressing character.

An old truck, barn, and silo near Chehalis, Washington.

Sometimes you just have to pull over.  That was the sentiment on my mind as I was driving back from the airport yesterday when I saw the old truck, barn, and silo just off the road we were on.  I had driven into Portland to pick up my travel companion and we were returning to our campsite.  The scene was idyllic, photographically speaking, because of the character of what I was seeing.  Old and weathered, overflowing in details, the components were breath-taking symbols of historic rural Americana. 

I pulled over to the side of the road and retrieved my camera.  There were no fences and the buildings were near where I had parked, so I meandered about capturing what I saw from different angles.  This was the shot I liked the best.  The lighting was nice; soft cloud cover which allowed some sun through but not so much that details were lost in the shadows.  The sun’s angle allowed me to shoot the truck and barn without them being backlit.  The proximity of the pieces was also good.  Too close together would lose the independence of each piece, and too far apart would have rendered their relationship moot.

The way I framed this scene plays a big part in why I like this image.  I use a number of compositional techniques in my shots, ranging from rule of thirds, framing, lines and other things which draw your eye, depth of field, and so on.  The rule of thirds and the use of lines are clearly utilized here.  The silo with its ladder and rust-stained stripes fill the upper right quadrant, which would otherwise be empty.  The truck’s side window lines up with the silo; the door resides solidly on two of the third’s lines.  The barn window opposes the truck’s and its wooden facia draws the eye upwards.  Meanwhile, the roofline brings the viewer’s gaze back to the silo.

I find that the rule of thirds works really well when your eye cycles within an image; physical lines and boundaries often facilitate this.  It is the character of each item in the shot though that causes you to pause as you scrutinize details.  This is where an image really proves itself.  Nicely positioned items have a lot of value, but when those items themselves have real character and are genuinely interesting, it takes the image up to the next level.

A good photograph has many devices working for it.  Most onlookers are not even aware of them, yet they are drawn into it because of some unspoken attraction.  You may not be able to say why you like something, but it just appeals to you on some level.  Maybe it just has character.