The charm of rural scenery unfolds before you as you travel along back country roads. Such scenery offers a panorama of vistas among the tree-crowned hills and hidden valleys, punctuated by farms and other quaint structures along the way. I always experience a sense of freedom and exhilaration when moving through this landscape, and an air of expectation that something interesting will appear just around the next bend or over the next hill. The many farms that come into view make me feel nostalgic because many of my childhood days were spent on a remote Wisconsin farm. Perhaps that is why I feel a special rapport with this subject matter.
In my search for an appealing farm shot, I always look for well-kept buildings and handsome barns. There are many different barn styles that will catch your eye depending on your location. The shape of the roof can vary from Dutch gambrel to gable, arched, or hip. The more unusual styles can be an octagon barn with its faceted roof and central cupola, or round barns with conical roofs and occasional dormers. The round barn shown in Photo No. (To the right) I was not well kept, but I was impressed by its weathered boards bent to the radius of the structure. The roadside flowers just happened to be there, adding some foreground interest and improving the composition of the scene.
I always like to include the house with a farm scene, if possible, but it should have some architectural merit. Many farmhouses will have flower or vegetable gardens nearby, and this can create a colorful approach to the farm scene if included in the foreground of the photograph. Roadside wildflowers along a fence line can also be used to your advantage. If a nostalgic scene is desired, look for outmoded methods of farming, such as com shocks standing in a field or an oat field being harvested by a horse-drawn binder. A field of oat shocks can be reminiscent of days gone by and can also add to the composition and interest of the picture. Occasionally, I will place pumpkins in the foreground of a corn shock scene to add some color in a natural way. There are still farmers around who prefer the old ways, and some like to engage in old-time threshing as a hobby. The Amish and Mennonites are bound by their religion to utilize old farming methods, but while they don't mind you photographing their farms, they prefer not to be photographed themselves. If you are in hilly farm country, there is a pretty good chance that you will see strips of various crops planted along the contours of the hillside. This is known as contour farming, and it can add some fairly interesting designs to the landscape. Farm animals grazing in meadows create nice pastoral scenes. A slightly elevated view is usually preferred to see most of the herd. The animals will most likely react to your presence, so in order to be as unobtrusive as possible, have your camera metered, focused, and ready to shoot before you approach the fence line. Eliminate the barbed wire from the picture, if you can, but avoid trespassing into their territory for your own safety. The cows many seem fairly docile, but there is usually a bull with the herd. You need not travel far before spotting an old country church or school. The one-room schoolhouse will always create an attractive, nostalgic picture as long as it is still in good repair. Playground artifacts like swings and merry-go-rounds add to the foreground interest. The country church, however, is the greater landmark. Its steeple can be seen a good distance away and can lead you to it. Vermont churches are usually high on the list of subject matter with their tall steeples and colonial architecture, but the midwestern country church can be just as interesting with its simplistic design and solitary location. Many have a churchyard or cemetery nearby, and it is best pictorially to exclude it, if possible. However, you might wish to emphasize the older weathered gravestones by displaying them close enough in the foreground to read the dates and other engraved designs.
Another country landmark is an old grist mill, preferably with the waterwheel still attached. The one shown in Photo No. 2 still has the waterwheel, but the angle of view was taken across the mill pond to gain a reflection of the colorful mill. A more popular viewpoint would be at the other side of the dam where the entire waterwheel would be visible and showing the water spilling over the dam.
As you follow along these country roads, it is only a matter of time before you run into a small village with a church spire or two to mark its location. If it is nestled within a valley, the prospects of getting an elevated view of the entire village is quite possible, but you will have to climb some hills to get it. In your travels you may discover one of our country's revered covered bridges. They are located in almost any midwestern or eastern state, but particularly in Indiana, Ohio, Vermont, and New Hampshire. I find that the best angle of view is from the river's edge looking towards the span of the bridge. A frontal view can also be of interest as there is usually some inscriptions above the entrance, but you will most likely need some foreground attraction to complement the scene and visually lead you up to the bridge.
Almost any antiquated structure has a nostalgic essence around it, and you will see many abandoned houses, churches, schools, and other structures along the more remote roads. In Photo No. 3, I came across this old farmhouse where the lilacs were still flourishing for the departed tenants. They added color to an otherwise drab exterior. To heighten the feeling of abandonment, the camera was positioned so that blue sky could be seen through the windowless openings.
Finding a scene to photograph is only part of the work. Determining the right viewpoint and composing it in a way that will utilize all the enhancing elements around by placing them in proper relation to the center of interest is the rest of the work. Sometimes it is difficult to create an interesting composition, but there is almost always a way to photograph it if you keep in mind the elemental essence that attracted you to it in the first place. The rules of composition can always be broken you are able to substitute some other form of visual impact that will set it apart from the mundane.
In creating your composition, look for foreground objects that will add color and interest to the scene. Placing your camera near these objects, within the depth-of-field of the lens, will give the picture more of a three-dimensional effect. In Photo No. 4, the distant view was framed between two nearby trees, and the foreground rocks were included to add color and depth. The view would have fallen flat like an aerial shot without these foreground features. Many such vistas will open up to you if you seek high vantage points by climbing hills or bluffs. Sometimes a hilltop road will afford a lookout for you along its crest.
Not all countryside has hills and valleys. In many parts of the midwest, the terrain is quite flat, and pictures usually end up with a larger sky area. This can be to your advantage the sky is filled with billowy clouds, for sometimes these formations can create quite a dramatic cloudscape. On the other hand; if the sky is devoid of clouds, you will probably want to reduce the sky area by including more of the foreground, and finding something interesting and colorful for this then becomes an important part if of your composition.Whether you are shooting with a 4x5 view camera or 35mm, it is important to keep the camera level. Even in a landscape without buildings, the convergence of lines becomes apparent the camera is tipped up or down. With a 4x5 camera, you need only to raise or lower the front lens to compensate for this. With a 35mm camera, this is not possible, so the horizon line should be kept as close as possible to the center of the viewing frame. This somewhat limits your freedom of composition, and you might end up with large areas void of detail in your format. To compensate for a large cloudless sky area, try framing the scene with overhanging tree branches. Avoiding a large nondescript foreground could mean moving your location to include some nearby attractive object.The rural imagery changes, of course, with the four seasons. You can travel the same route as before in a different season and come up with a variety of different pictures. In Spring, many trees and bushes are in blossom, creating color and beauty to the landscape. Certain wooded areas become overspread with wildflowers, and fruit orchards will burst into bloom. Summer brings forth the gardens and field crops. After the rains, the roadsides flourish with summer's variety of wildflowers. Watch for farmers working the fields; haying in early summer, harvesting in late summer.
In Autumn the landscape changes again with birches and maples setting the hillsides aglow. Large crown maples along the road can be used to frame a scene with their overhanging branches as shown in Photo No. 5. That year, the autumn color was hard to find, but one colorful maple tree placed in the foreground seemed to brighten up the whole landscape.
Photo No. 5
Winter can also provide you with some pretty spectacular scenery if you venture out after a sizable snowfall, but wait, for a day with sunshine and blue sky to add color and blue shadows to the scene. The red barns will add a second color to an otherwise monochromatic landscape. The aftermath of an ice storm can transform the landscape again. Also watch for a morning when freezing fog covers the trees and bushes with hoarfrost, but, again, you will need to wait for the fog to dissipate, leaving a background of blue sky to contrast with the silvered branches. No matter what the season, there will always be something to photograph throughout the countryside. Perhaps it will be some childhood memory you may wish to recapture on film or else some grand vista that will cause your spirit to soar. The possibilities are practically endless. They are there just waiting for you to discover them.
