Covered Bridges

When I was a student at OIP&T (Ohio Institute of Photography & Technology), one of my assignments was to choose a photographer and copy their style. This was a black and white film class so we were to choose from photographers of the past. These projects were some of my favorite, I love to learn about the photographers upon whose shoulders the foundation of photography as I know it is laid. One of the more famous and obvious choices is Ansel Adams, my initial decision was to choose him. I really love Ansel's work, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that Ansel was to obvious a choice. I ended up choosing Edward Weston, though not as famous he and Ansel were close friends. They were both great photographers though Ansel is more widely known today. In class, our teacher would show slide shows of different photographers work, so that we could see their styles and decide who we wanted to emulate. I almost chose Elliott Erwitt, his work is very comical and whimsical in nature. When we came to Edward Weston he showed us a series of Weston's tastefully done nudes, which I thought were very good images but not something that I wanted to try and do myself. After the nudes he showed us a series that Weston had done on American Barns. This series really struck me as interesting, I had been wanting to do some photos of the covered bridges around Greene County and this would fall right in line with the project. The only negative was that it was winter and the scenery in Ohio during the winter months is not really very photogenic. Not to mention that it is cold out and I wanted to shoot from in the rivers to get the best view. Did I let this stop me? Of course not, what self respecting photographer would let cold weather and cold water stop him from getting his shot? O.K. don't answer that question, I was being rhetorical. In Greene County there are 6 covered bridges and I shot them all. The project turned out pretty good but I can't share the images with you today. They are all film and I haven't taken the time to scan them and make them digital yet. I do have a shot of one of the bridges that I will upload, it was taken in the summer so the grass and trees are green. The images I used for my class project show bare trees and gray skies. One of these days I'll scan them and upload them for you to see. I may write tomorrow about another photographer of the past that I learned about in my history of photography class. She was before Ansel and Weston and she photographed the wild west state of Montana, or maybe I'll tell you more about Weston. Who knows, tomorrow I may change the topic to something totally different, that is why I like this blog, I can talk about whatever I want.

Photoman