From 1995 to 2005, I logged nearly 30,000 miles biking in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), my beloved farmland. I created three routes of 15, 20 and 25 miles respectively, and would bike one or two at least three times a week.
I never took one photograph.
In September 2016, after semi-retiring from corporate America, I began to walk or hike regularly from my home to farmland very early in the morning. At that time, I owned an iPhone 5 and one October morning, took my first farmland photo. Knowing that BARC was scheduled to close today, I methodically went through other photos I had taken about the same time in October every year after that. Did they tell a story about farmland? About me? If so, what was the story?
OCTOBER 2016
My very first farmland photo. When I heard the geese, I whipped out my iPhone 5 and pressed the shutter completely unaware of camera and light adjustments. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the rainbowand that the geese looked like a wishbone.
OCTOBER 2017
Still completely ignorant of iPhone camera adjustments, I captured this image of a spider web. I paid no attention to the sunrise.
OCTOBER 2018
I purposely took a photo of the sunrise, still not knowing how to make camera adjustments before or after capturing the image.It may have been after seeing this shot that Adrienne advised me not to shoot directly into the sun.
OCTOBER 2019
Now with an iPhone 7, I remember stepping to my right or left because I wanted the photo to capture “the tree that thought it was a chimney,” as I posted on my Facebook page. I had composed the shot so it could tell a story. (BTW, this is not a black-and-white photo. I didn’t know how to do that, either. The sky really looked like that.)
OCTOBER 2020
One of my first photos of Beaver Dam Creek. I retreated more often than usual to farmland because of the pandemic.
OCTOBER 2021
I wish I had known about camera and exposure adjustments for this sunrise shot because it was something I had never seen before. The foreground is too dark, nevertheless my jaw still drops when I see this image.
October 2022
My first photo following a hip replacement in August. I am now shooting with an iPhone14 Pro and have figured out how to make camera adjustments before the shot. I still know nothing about filters.
OCTOBER 2023
I named this sewage retention pond, “Goose Pond” because hundreds of geese used this as a sanctuary. Since 2019, I too had found solace here. At the time of this photo, my beloved friend, Judy was battling Stage 4 bile duct cancer, and I always texted her my Goose Pond shots because she so loved nature and the outdoors.
OCTOBER 2024
A blue heron flies over Goose Pond. I took seven shots to get what I thought was a good one.
OCTOBER 2025
Beaver Dam Creek, and by this time I knew about camera adjustments and not shooting directly into the sun. Still not so much about filters. It continues to be all trial and error.
NEXT:
What has walking through farmland for a decade taught me?
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