Things I see along the side of the road have always interested me, particularly in rural America.
This particular image is an old wooden sign, sitting at the intersection of two county roads on my morning commute. I drive 13 miles from my home in Pittsburg, Kansas, to my office in Girard, Kansas. I've passed this particular sign I don't know how many times and, finally, decided I had to stop and make an image.
Several thoughts go through my mind, every time I see something of this type out in the country. Who put this sign up? Why did they decide to put it up and why here? What else might have been here around the time this unknown person erected this sign?
Those are just a few of the questions that scramble around in my brain every time I see something like this. And it may not be a sign that captures my attention. I get the same thoughts when I pass an old barn, an abandoned farm house or a rusting piece of equipment sitting at the edge of a farm field.
Who lived here? What happened to them? How many times had this particular tractor or whatever run through this field in the spring, tilling the earth as a farmer worked the make a living on the land and feed his family?
Questions are the easy part. It's the answers that elude me. I'd like to think this sign, for instance, commemorates a deep love for out country and the freedoms we enjoy. Freedoms that are going away, often unremarked by any. Will a day come when someone can't put up a sign on their own property, patriotic or not? Or say what they want, controversial or not.
It's the questions that are easy. The answers are hard. But they're answers I need to search for. Maybe we all do?
As promised, the second part of this first post is An Introduction.
My name is Andrew Brosig and I'm a professional photographer and writer, currently living in Pittsburg, Kansas. Let me get the obligatory stuff out of the way: Everything I write or post here is my thoughts or images and don't reflect on anyone else. I work for a newspaper, but I'm not going to mention which one. They have nothing to do with this.
It's all me.
I've been toying with the idea of a blog for some time now. I even started one before, but it never went anywhere. Hopefully, I'll do better with this one.
As I said, I'm a professional photographer. But photography is more than a job to me. Oh, I'm not going to go all fuzzy and say it's a calling. I think that's at least partially crap whenever anyone says it. Photography is my job. But it's also my passion.
I'm never happier than when I have a camera in my hand. It lets me get out of my head and into a creative place that I really enjoy. It calms me when I'm out and about, trolling the back roads, looking for images that interest me.
I'm going to try and include a little bit of technical information with the photographs I post. This particular image was captured using a Canon G9, one of the class of so-called "advanced digital point-and-shoot" cameras. I haven't had it very long and I'm still pouring through the instruction book, trying to learn all its features.
This is probably long enough already, so I'll quit this posting now. Please keep checking back.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment