Pond and mountains

Cyrus McCormick Farm - Raphine, Virginia 

Earlier this month I made another visit to coastal North Carolina. Hope you will stop by next week for some pictures taken while exploring a lovely cypress swamp in Merchant Millpond State Park.

Enjoy the weekend and thanks for reading Photography In Place.

Montpelier Hunt Races

Montpelier, Virginia 

Friends invited me to attend the 78th running of the Montpelier Hunt Races at Montpelier, the family estate of President James Madison. The event was held on a cool fall Saturday morning on the first weekend of November. This was my first time at a steeplechase event, and it was more difficult to photograph than I imagined. I was not prepared for the speed of the horses, and catching them as they came over the jumps took reflexes better than I possess.

After the first race my friend previewed the photos I had taken and tactfully advised me that it was best to get the whole horse in the frame. She was right, of course, and I did better by switching to a wider lens, but this shot does suggest a bit of the intensity and speed of the race.

These horses are approaching the jump. If you look closely at the two horses in the lead you can see that they are both completely airborne, with all four hooves off the ground.

Grist Mill

McCormick Farm - Raphine, Virginia

The grist mill on the grounds of the Cyrus McCormick farm. This photo was taken during my visit there in October.

Clabber Girl

Brookhaven, Mississippi

"Wash house" on Route 33

Lydia, Virginia 

We photographed this house on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains in January 2011, but the wash was not out that day (see this post). I have been meaning to get back and get a picture of the house when the wash was on the line on the front porch. This picture was taken the last weekend in October while there was still some autumn color on the mountain.

Please visit Photography In Place Print Gallery website to purchase a print of "Wash House on Route 33"

Thanksgiving 2012

Greene County, Virginia 

We will be taking a short break over Thanksgiving and will resume our regular schedule on Monday, November 26th . This year, our Thanksgiving story is called The Squirrel and the Crow 

Have a great day tomorrow and thanks for reading Photography in Place. 

The Squirrel and the Crow 

A Thanksgiving Fable

One chilly November morning, a gray squirrel was gathering food for the winter. He was a very gray gray squirrel, for he had seen many seasons come and go, and he knew just where to hide his winter food, safe from nosy groundhogs and thieving bluejays. Soon the winter snows would fall.

Presently, he came to a road that runs through the wood. He stopped on the edge of the road, flicking his tail nervously. Just then, he heard a loud voice, coming from high above, and he looked up to see a shiny black crow high on a branch overhead.

"CAW! Be careful friend, for a dangerous menace hurtles up and down this path, and it flattens any creature that gets in its way." The crow was hungry and quickly made a plan. "Wait, and I will watch  and tell you when it is safe to cross, for I have keen eyes and from my branch I can see very far."

The squirrel settled on his haunches beside the road. He arranged his tail into a question mark over his back and waited. He waited for what seemed like a very long time before the crow spoke again.

"Get ready!" the crow cawed and spread his wings. "Now! Now! Now!"

But the gray squirrel, instead of starting across the road, turned and looked up at the crow. "Thank you, kind crow!" he called, but his words were drowned out by the roar of a big black car that hurtled down the road just as he spoke. The disappointed crow flew off  and the gray squirrel scurried safely into the woods on the other side of the road.

Back in his warm den, the squirrel ate a feast of hickory nuts and some red berries that he had saved special to celebrate the beginning of winter. Then he burrowed into his nest and arranged his tail to keep his feet warm. The light was fading and he listened to the sound of the wind in the trees.

It is a good thing to always give thanks, he thought to himself and soon he was sound asleep.

Autumn farm #2

Greene County, Virginia

Autumn farm

Greene County, Virginia

Third Sunday - November 2012

Bear Creek Methodist Church - Hinds County, Mississippi 

"Bear Creek Methodist Church was established in the early 1820s under the leadership of Reverend Thomas Nixon. The first sanctuary, a log cabin structure, was built in the late 1820s. The third sanctuary, this vernacular Greek Revival structure was built in 1856."

from roadside marker erected by Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Fence, tree and clouds

Cyrus McCormick Farm - Raphine, Virginia 

This Sunday we will be featuring a church building in Bear Creek Mississippi on our regular Third Sunday post. Hope you have a nice weekend and thanks for reading Photography In Place.

Cyrus McCormick Farm

Raphine, Virginia

The 620 acre estate of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the first mechanical reaper, was known as Walnut Grove and remained in the McCormick family until 1954 when the family donated the property to Virginia Tech. Today the original buildings, including the family home, workshop and mill are open to the public. Virginia Tech operates the Shenandoah Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center on the property.

Cyrus McCormick demonstrated the first successful reaper on a nearby field of oats in 1831. The picture above shows the McCormick workshop.

Shenandoah Valley Railroad Locomotive 40

Staunton, Virginia 

Bear with me for just one more locomotive photograph from my visit to Staunton last week. This EMD GP9 was built in August 1955 as Chesapeake and Ohio 5940. It went through several owners over the years, and is now in active service for the Shenandoah Valley Railroad.

I was barely a teenager when the last steam locomotives were taken out of service in the United States and many of those were replaced by EMD GP7s and GP9s in the 1950s. The opportunity to photograph working steam is long past but there are still early diesels in service along many regional and short line railroads around the country.

At some time in the future, the opportunity to photograph these will be gone, just as the opportunity to photograph steam locomotives is gone today. Photographers will look back and wish they had been around when diesel locomotives built in the 1940s and 50s were still in service. It is a rare opportunity to photograph a part of railroad history before it becomes another museum exhibit.

Former Maine Coast Locomotive 367

Staunton, Virginia 



This Alco RS-11 was built for the Norfolk and Western Railroad in 1958. Earlier this year, it was acquired by the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad and is currently undergoing rehab in Staunton. The plan is to put #367 back into service as a back-up locomotive on the Shenandoah Valley Railroad. The paint scheme for the engine has not been determined, but it will no longer be in Maine Coast livery.

Shenandoah Valley Railroad Locomotive 8701

Staunton, Virginia

Last week I spent Friday afternoon photographing over in the Shenandoah Valley. Near the end of the day I passed through Staunton on my way home and spotted these Shenandoah Valley Railroad locomotives alongside old Route 11. This locomotive is a Whitcomb  RS-4-TC  built for the United States Air Force around 1954 for service in the Korean War.

Autumn Color #5

Turkey Ridge Road - Greene County, Virginia 

"Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested" - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Autumn Color #4

Greene County, Virginia

Autumn Color #3

Greene County, Virginia

Autumn Color #2

Oak leaves - Greene County, Virginia

Autumn Color #1

Greene County, Virginia 

This week we are going to be looking at the last of the Autumn colors here at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These pictures were taken just before hurricane Sandy hit. The fall colors have been somewhat muted this year, partly because the trees lost a lot of their leaves before the colors peaked. The storm stripped even more leaves, but there are still patches of color here and there, mostly in the understory trees.

Lauri Ellen

All of the black and white pictures of Mystic Seaport this week were taken on a trip to New England in September, 1989. This picture was taken on that same trip somewhere on Cape Cod. I don't remember shooting any color film on that trip so most likely my wife photographed this little flat-bottomed dingy.  The black and white of Mystic Seaport was shot on Kodak Plus-X with my Pentax MX SLR, which I still have and use.

If you were in Sandy's path, I hope that recovery is well under way, your lights are back on and life is returning to normal. Enjoy your weekend, don't forget to set back your clocks Sunday morning, and as always, thanks for reading Photography In Place.

Mystic Seaport #3

Mystic, Connecticut