The most enjoyable aspect, for me, of festivals like the Bridgeton Covered Bridge Festival in Indiana is seeing the wide variety of antique items offered by vendors.
Amish farmers and crafts people are common in this area. Horse drawn carriages are still in use by the Amish. The carriages pictured here are nearby an Amish vendor area, but since today is a Sunday, there are no Amish manning the booths. These carriages may or may not be offered for sale by the Amish, these may simply be antique horse drawn carriages displayed by others.
Old toys, tricycles and wagons are offered for sale.
And, of course, a wide selection of old home and farm products are in the vendors’ booths.
I like photographing these items; but I do not claim to be an expert at such photography.
The variations in colors, patinas, shapes and sizes of old, collectible, nostalgic items and the wording and logos on old signs are fun to inspect and to photograph.
Old, colorful bottles in different shapes and sizes have a magnetic effect upon me.
The photographs in this post are a few of the many possibilities for making interesting images of objects that one can find at the numerous covered bridge festivals in this area. A small, unobtrusive camera, such as a phone or point and shoot, might work better in this environment than a DSLR. The items in this post are photographed as found in the vendors’ displays.
During our September, 2019 visit to Liberty, Kentucky, we stayed in a VRBO rental near Russel Springs, Kentucky and the Cumberland Lake. The rental was in the country about a 45 minute drive via country roads to Liberty. Nearly each day, we drove by an interesting looking country antique place. What initially caught my eye was an old, rusty Ford pickup truck out front with the sign “Sue’s” on it.
Late one day on our way past, I decided to stop to get an iPhone shot of the old truck. It was just after hours for the antique place, but the owner, Sue, saw us and came out to chat with us. She actually opened a couple of the small store units and let us look around.
Barbara bought a small item that she liked and I browsed around, mostly outside, shooting interesting objects around her stores.
Sue even told me to check her yard decor at her house next door to the antique stores and invited Barbara into her house to look at her antiques.
Sue had interesting yard decor with a definite country flair.
Sue had numerous old grinding wheels and grist mill wheels. These must have been a real chore to move around.
There is something very appealing, nostalgic and comforting about country yard decor such as Sue’s.
As I was browsing around Sue’s yard, her husband, a retired school bus driver, arrived after doing some tractor work for someone. We chatted about the old truck, which he had wanted to paint, but Sue did not want the truck painted, which I think is fortunate, as it looks quite appealing in its current rusty state. Sue’s husband showed me a photograph of an old automobile in a pasture, which he was acquiring from someone he knew. He said he would paint that old car, since he was forbidden to paint the old truck.
Before we got away, I was fortunate to get a sunset shot, although it is only via my iPhone, which does not handle the high light contrast very well.
Sue’s husband also had put small lights in the old truck’s headlight holes, so I got a shot of the truck with the light on at sunset.
It is always amazing to me how friendly our country people are and it is always a pleasant surprise to meet people like Sue and her husband.