Wander thru my mind
No! No Freud today! It’s merely an exercise and lament. When I’m dead, someone looking thru the image catalog will have no reference to time and place. I have a database that will inform. Sure. But, I look at a series and piece together my past memory. The waterfall? I haven’t a clue to what or where. But the adjacent images on the same day, tell a story. I was in Amish country. Someone told me an eagle had nested among the powerlines. There was an image in an Amish market. The African daisy was on sale outside the door. I got some. And the clincher was an Amish farmer plowing the field. For me, in my mind, an image is the trigger for memory. By itself the image might mean nothing to the viewer. To me? it is the anchor to a memory of the day. It’s not photographic memory in one’s sense of genius and it is, most definitely, in my own mind. Convoluted? The brain is like that.
Shot of the day
I got a series of three for this scene. None are more informative. Amish family, three kids, the dad drives from the right seat. The kids sit on folding chairs in the back. They wear distinctive traditional garb that marks them. I had seen horse shit by the side of the road. This now closed the information loop on how it got there. There is a lot to be learned passing a two horse cart on the side of the road.
Shot of the day? We finally saw color. This is one of many on a successful day finding fall color.
Push pull
The Amish are odd because of their habits – no buttons or zippers on their clothes. And they do not use electricity or machine power. The hay baler is not powered, I guess. We all live amonst one another in peace. No pictures please. You know me. There’s never been a rule I didn’t try to break. Sorry. The rule in “Street photography” is that in “public” you are fair game for photography. It doesn’t mean I will photograph if you are in an embarrassing position. But otherwise…. that weaving device was one of the few I did not buy. What is it? Dunno. It would’ve been a good conversation starter.
Class
Weaving. Colleen wove this in a week. It was a sampler demonstrating double weave. ??? I think. Who knows? I was on my own to explore Amish country. Quaint. It is a clash of modern vs old. Horse and buggy, bicycle without pedals, modern hay baler pulled by horse, clothing without buttons, it’s just so dyssynchronous.
There are many who gawk. (Guilty, me.) The folks are oblivious. They tolerate. There’s no choice. They are out in the public. Or, that would make me rude. Sorry. A camera and me? There’s no way i pass up a photo op. I just do my best to be discrete.
Amish Country
In order to give Lisa a little break, I periodically took the kids on field trips. This time it was Pennsylvania and the Amish. They had towns with names like – Bird in Hand and Intercourse. Go figure. Eating was family style buffets. I remember one dinner and the kids were on a strawberry kick. I brought a plate of strawberries from the salad bar. About seven or eight plates later, they didn’t ask me to get up any more. I kept under estimating the strawberries they could eat. I recall this was small amusement park. You gotta wonder what the kids were thinking as they played around with these ceramic totems. Milking a pottery cow?
I won’t swear to it but I think this is store in the movie “Witness” where Harrison Ford makes a phone call. Grandpa Bill is upper right and about where the phone was located. 
photobackstory 