Jenne Farm

Author's Comments

I came to Jenne Farm knowing exactly what I would find, and that is part of the strange honesty of the place. The composition has been made ten thousand times. The red barn, the white farmhouse, the dirt road bending past, the hills folding behind in layers of maple and birch. You have seen this farm even if you have never been to Vermont. There is no discovery here, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. What there is, instead, is the question of whether you can make the photograph yours. I am not sure I have. The first hour after sunrise in the first week of October is when the scene resolves the way the calendars promise - mist still settling in the low ground between the farm and the ridge, the white clapboard catching warm light before the barn does, the dirt road leading the eye exactly where it should. Stand on the public road above, on the hillside approach from the south, and do not step onto the property. People live and work there. That matters. I prefer the place a week before peak, when the color is still building and the photographers have not fully arrived. The composition is slightly less perfect and considerably more alive. Late summer also surprises me - the green hills, the long evening light raking across the field, fewer cars pulled to the shoulder. Golden hour in August at Jenne Farm is a quieter photograph than the October version, and possibly a better one. Bring a longer lens than instinct suggests. The compression is what makes the image work.

Gallery