Continuing my set of square crops - couple more to go, then on to something different - I found this shot two years ago while searching for migrating Sandhill Cranes. It had been a productive morning, so I didn't mind being distracted by this eye catching, dilapidated beauty.
It was actually not a barn, but an old shed, presumably once used for grain storage. Today metal bins are the norm. I didn't look inside, but those bolted-on pieces of wood and metal plates are probably connected to long steel rods that run through the interior of the structure and are affixed the same way on the opposite side. This was necessary because the pressure from a big load of grain would cause the wood planks to bow outward. An old prairie farmer made me aware of this practice years ago; often old seeder discs were used to anchor the metal rods.
That's the practical part. The aesthetic part, well, it's mostly intuitive, isn't it? You can't create art via logic; you have to feel it. The straight lines, the squares and rectangles that form the main shapes within the frame, these can produce a symmetry that doesn't appeal to me very much. But the peeling paint (texture and colour) and uneven distribution of other elements in the frame offset these geometric qualities, I think.
Photographed at the north end of Last Mountain Lake, near Govan, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2020 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
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