For two years, we traveled the backroads of  Wisconsin, making images of old barns and talking to farmers about their love of the land. Those images are published in "Wisconsin Barns." The book features 107 images organized by region and makes a great gift or moment. "Wisconsin Barns" is available for $14.95 plus shipping.  Copies signed by yours truly are available special order by emailing me at ernestjschweit@sbcglobal.net

I know that time of  year we should be posting images of snow clad barns in fields of white, but I've had just about enough of the cold weather here in the midwest.

So as luck would have it, I stumbled upon this lovely fall setting we captured in Varona, Wis.

My wife and I were headed back from the farmer's market in Madison; our itinerary for the day included some "barning." So off the main drag we drove until we found this.

We enhanced the clouds a bit with Lightroom 5.2 and decided on the horizontal crop because the expansive landscape seemed to suggest that treatment.

We'll post this image for purchase on the "American Barns" gallery of our web page, www.ernestjschweitphotography.com.

We spent a week this past summer on a photo tour of New England, looking for old barns to photograph.
Specifically, we visited small towns Massachusetts and Connecticut.
We created hundreds of images, which we will be posting in the days ahead.
This one is among my favorites, recorded on a hazy day that turned rainy a few seconds after making this shot.
We broke a couple of so-called rules to make this picture, most notably the one about not shooting into the sun.
We did it on purpose, just to see what we got, in this case an almost high-key effect in the sky, which worked well with the weathered old barn wood and green foliage.
The American flag hanging from the barn seemed to be common in this part of the world. We noticed it on lots of other barns we saw.
More of our barn images are on my Facebook page, Ernest J. Schweit, and on my website, www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

Swan Lake

It took three u-turns on a country road in McHenry County to get this image of an abandoned barn.
I was on my way back from scouting out locations for a wedding job when I came upon the Swan Lake Produce Barn.
The faded sign over the door grabbed me on my first trip past the old farmstead.
Then I noticed the stone foundation, not often seen in Illinois, but very common in Wisconsin.
Finally, the overgrown weeds nearby.
Perfect, I thought.
The perfect visual symbol of bygone days that our kids will know only in history books, if at all.
Enjoy the view!

The great thing about photography---as it is with any art form---is that  its a total expression of the artist. There are no right and wrong answers, which my students hear me say constantly, in an effort to free their minds to the possibilities.
So it was with this old silo, the third and final image from a recent series I made while traveling through Wisconsin.
In my rural landscape work, color is my mainstay, but more and more I'm seeing a visual appropriateness (is that a word?) in black and white.
To my way of seeing, black and white just seems to fit these old bastions on the prairie, like that comfortable pair of slippers we wear at the end of a long day in stiff dress shoes. The dress shoes look great, but the slippers...well, they feel great.
Anyways, more barns and samples of our other work is up on my portfolio web site, www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

The texture of weathered wood and patterns formed by a fieldstone foundation  drew us to make an image of  this old barn in Thiensville, Wisc.
This is another shot from our recent trip to drop off new work at Cedar Creek Pottery in Cedarburg, Wisc. We were fortunate to come away with this image, given our scheduling this day found us shooting right around noon, when light is harsh.
I should thank the great American photographer, David Plowden for giving me the courage to point my camera of barns like this.  
If you don't know him, David is famous for his image making of American farmland, steam trains and small towns. He was good enough to sign one of his books, "A Handful of Dust: the  Disappearing America," for me when we met a few years ago. On the cover is an abandoned storefront, a beautiful image. After seeing that, I figured, if David Plowden could do old storefronts, I could do barns! See David's work at www.davidplowden.com
More of my barns, plus other work is at www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

We were in Cedarburg, Wisc., the other day, dropping off new work to show at Cedar Creek Pottery, when we decided to do some backroads exploring.
A few minutes west of Thiensville, we stumbled upon this old barn and cement silo in a wonderful field of late spring grasses.
As you can see, this image captures the typical stone foundation found in most Badger state barns and some nice white clouds streaking the blue skies.
Our other work hasn't left us much time for "barning," so this shot was a nice way to get back in the groove.
By the way, if you are up in this area, stop by the Cedar Creek Pottery (www.cedarcreekpottery.com) gallery. its at n70 26340 Bridge Road to view our three new framed images, a handful of matted pieces and, of course, the fine pottery and other art owner Andee Warren has on view. 
We'll post more images from this trip and others are the schedule this summer. So stay tuned!

We snuck away during a recent family visit for a couple of hours "barning" in rural Virginia when we discovered this little gem in Purceville.
Ok, so its not the Midwest. But still.....
Our intention was to ramble about Loudon County, Va., looking for barns. Sadly, our rambles took us by many new subdivisions, but no barns.
Until we followed Route 7 west for a few more miles and found this old place.
Its actually not that old. In fact, it appears to have been converted to a flower business.
We were so excited to find it, we didn't remember to compose the shot so the white house wasn't in the frame.
Oh, well. Still a cool barn. We burned the edges a bit to add a slight pinhole look to the finished product.
Enjoy!
For more barn images, visit www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

 This window on an abandoned barn looked a little spookey when we first spotted it.

In fact, the whole farmstead looked uninviting to visitors, but for photographers...well it was a treasure trove of interesting images.

We converted this one to black and white then, for fun, we added some grain in an effort to make it look "old school." You know....like it was recorded on film. You remember that, right?

For more barn images, and other work, visit our web site: www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

We spent a recent Sunday morning trudging through an abandoned farmstead north of Chicago with our photo friend, Jay.
The day was dreary, which seemed to fit well with the feeling as we photographed the old farmhouse and barns that remain on the property.
When we looked at the images in Lightroom, color just didn't seem to fit the downcast mood that permeated the place.
So we shifted to Black and White.
We like the results.
Any comments?
For more images, visit www.ernestjschweitphotography.com. You'll need to navigate to the Midwest Barns portfolio.

As nice as this scene is, it almost never saw the light of day.
We almost missed the place as we drove through southwestern Illinois recently.
It sits below the road and as we drove by, it took a second look before we spotted it.
And it  took a third look at all the images from our trip in Lightroom the other day before we noticed it. Now that its out there, though, I think the wait was worth it. For more barn images, and other images from our  portfolio, visit www.ernestjschweitphotography.com

The skies were clear, the sun was hot and the corn was pretty far along when I discovered this scene in western Illinois, south of Macomb, the other day.
We were on a Sunday drive just for fun with my son, who had recently graduated Western Illinois University, when this place appeared on the horizon.The last four years, we have made many images on trips to see my son, but now that he's graduated, there won't be many journeys to this part of the midwest.

We organized a barn shoot the other day for some of our students from Harper College in Palatine, Ill.
Our destination was the Fox River Grove/Barrington Area, where we found this wonderful red barn in a huge meadow.
Truth is, we had shot this barn before, so we challenged ourselves to find a new perspective.
We grabbed a 28 to 80 zoom, our trusty tripod and went to work. Here's the result.
For more of our images, visit our new web site, www.ernestjschweitphotography.com or "like" us on Facebook at Ernest J. Schweit photography.
More photos from the Harper shoot in the days ahead.

I'm not sure why, but I've always been fascinated by old barn doors. There's something almost mystical about the grain of the old wood, the rust of the joints and locks and the reflections of the window glass.

Here's our latest barn door find, the one on the side of an old barn near Lincolnshire, Ill., northwest of the Chicago.

The entire farmstead--or what's left of it--is below.

I'm always on the lookout for old barns to photograph, so if you know of any, send me a note, OK?

The suburban sprawl has eaten up most of the farms northwest of Chicago. But here and there,  you can still find vestiges of the area's agricultural past. 
We found this one in Lake County near Lincolnshire. This tattered barn and silos stand near a huge high school and subdivisions with large, fancy homes.
It is doubtful that moms in their mini-vans driving to soccer games or teenagers heading to school are aware of the history that this farm, and others like it, recall.