Back before the popularity of digital photography, almost all serious camera artists used a simple tool to help them evaluate composition before ever setting up the camera. Using film meant you only had a limited number of possible pictures you could take based on the number of sheets or rolls of film you had with you.

Today, most digital cameras have large memory cards offering the potential to store hundreds of images at a time, and they provide an instant replay of the picture just taken on the rear LCD panel (this is called “chimping”). Digital photography has led many photographers into a habit of just shooting anything and everything, happily chimping along, hoping that when they get back to the computer they’ll find something on the memory card worth keeping. Of course, it can take a lot of time sitting in front of the computer to sort, analyze, and select the images to creatively interpret (or post-process). Personally, I find this workflow extremely tedious, extremely inefficient, and it drains my creativity instead of filling it.

There’s something rewarding about reading a scene before taking its picture. A good fisherman doesn’t just plop into the stream and start casting. A good painter doesn’t just set the easel down and begin painting en plein air. Deciding where to fish successfully or what to paint successfully is a very deliberate process. What to photograph should be just as deliberate. Studying a subject helps us connect with it, and that connection will ultimately transfer to someone else who views the photograph and result in a good feeling, a bad feeling, or worse case..no feeling at all.

A viewing card (or preview card) is a simple, no cost tool that photographers can use to wean themselves from the tendency to shoot and chimp all day long. The rewards are many: fewer pictures, better pictures, a greater understanding of composition, and a more intimate relationship with our subjects.

When I’m scouting for subjects en plain air, the only thing in my hands is my viewing card. It’s made from scrap mat board, about 8″ x 10″, with a 4×5″ opening to match the dimensions of my 4×5 camera. I’ve added a scale on one side that relates distance I hold the card from my eyes to match the focal lengths of the lenses in my camera bag. If I find the perfect composition to be what I see in the frame when held 9 inches from my eye, I know I’ll need my 125mm lens to capture that composition. I can turn it vertically or horizontally at will. I can get higher or lower to the ground at will. I can easily walk around scoping all possibilities at will. Only when (and if) I find a composition I like will I remove my camera from its bag. By then I already know which lens to use, where to approximately place the camera relative to the subject, and which perspective I need to use. All the while, I’ve also gotten to know my subject pretty well, my excitement is peaked, and I’m better able (I hope) to transfer that excitement into the image during creative interpretation.

Some might argue that simply using the camera viewfinder as a viewing card is just as effective as a cardboard viewing card. Perhaps. But I find that when I set up my camera, my overwhelming tendency is now to focus on the camera and not on the subject. My whole frame of mind changes from seeing what’s in front of me to adjusting, clicking, adjusting, clicking. Once the camera is mounted on the tripod, I quit moving around and settle for wherever it happens to be. Once the camera is mounted in horizontal (or vertical) perspective, it typically stays in that perspective. And it’s much more difficult to compose a scene in a camera’s small viewfinder than it is with a larger viewing card. With my eyes embedded in the viewfinder, I find it very easy to totally neglect everything beyond that field of view. Did I miss that bird flying around just outside my view? Or that mountain lion? Or that hiker/kayaker/climber? Or that beautiful cloud formation? Possibly.

Try this next time you are out shooting and let me know how it goes. I suspect you’ll find this simple tool very helpful.

Today’s trip takes us to the village of Philomont, the southern-most of the three “Mont Villages” along Snickersville Turnpike, then to Lincoln, where Quakers established the Goose Creek Meeting in 1736 that continues as an active community today.

Philomont

Philomont is a quiet, shady little village at the crossroads of Snickersville Turnpike and Jeb Stuart Road in Loudoun County, Virginia. To the north of Jeb Stuart Road was 434 acres granted to Quaker Joseph Dixon; to the south was the 538-acre 1739 grant to Englishman Lovell Jackson. Absentee Englishmen held the Jackson grant until 1836, when ownership transferred to ‘locals,’ who were predominantly Methodists. One prominent family on the south side of the road was the Roszels, who made it possible to build the first church in the area, the Mountain Chapel. As early as 1769, an Anglican chapel sat near the Hibbs Bridge on Mountain Road (Snickersville Turnpike). The Southern Methodists assumed control of the chapel in 1890, and because the Milhollen family deeded a half-acre in Philomont to them, they moved their little church, stone by stone, to the new site. It still stands today as a United Methodist Church and carries the name Roszel’s Chapel in honor of the original family who made it possible.

After the Snickersville Turnpike Company straightened The Great Road (or Colchester Road) in 1818, and where it then crossed with other main roads, the village of Philomont sprang up, grew, and got its first post office in 1831. Three years later the town had six dwellings, one school, seven mercantiles, two saddlers, and probably a blacksmith and a wheelwright shop.

The only remaining store today is the one built in 1913 from concrete blocks made on site. It has an interesting history, having been built for “Pop Milhollen” who had owned the red brick store across the street until it burned down in 1908. The new store was named Pearson’s General Store and it remained a Milhollen family business until 1964.

Over the years, the Philomont Post Office moved from store to store, but eventually found its permanent home in the old Pearson’s Store, renamed Philo-Mont Gen Store in 1966. It remains the only Loudoun County Post Office to operate from a store, just where it has since 1941.

Lincoln

North of Jeb Stuart Road in Philomont lies Loudoun’s historic Quaker land, all the way to the Potomac River between the Catoctin Mountains and the Blue Ridge.

The period 1730 – 1850 was a period of rapid growth and territorial migration of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, into northern parts of Colonial Virginia. Already settled in Maryland by 1725 (Monacacy Meeting at Buckeystown, MD) and in the Shenandoah Valley by 1730 (Hopewell Meeting near Winchester, VA), Quakers further migrated to areas along the south bank of the Potomac River and its tributaries. By 1735 there were so many more Quakers in Virginia compared to Maryland that the Hopewell Meeting became the business meeting for all Quakers in this area, including the community led by Amos Janney in 1733 to Waterford, VA, named Fairfax Meeting.

Jacob Janney, a relative of Amos, settled on the banks of Goose Creek about eight miles south of Fairfax Meeting as early as 1736. Friends locating there first worshipped in private houses, but moved into a log meetinghouse by 1738. In 1745 Janney sought to establish a new meeting called Goose Creek Meeting, and it was permitted in 1749. Goose Creek Friends bought a 10-acre tract to erect a meetinghouse and schoolhouse, and to establish a burial ground.

Quaker Meetinghouse photograph, Lincoln Virginia, — Old Stone Quaker Meeting House (1765), Lincoln, Virginia

The new 1765 stone meetinghouse became the center of the Goose Creek Meeting, but by 1815 the Meeting had outgrown it. A new brick meetinghouse, a schoolhouse, a stable, and other smaller structures were built between 1815 and 1817. These historic structures and the homes built since make up a beautifully quaint cloister of Virginia history we see as Lincoln today.

Lincoln’s history is remarkable in its strong supportive relationship between its black and white residents, consistent with Quaker dogma. They worked side by side in building and caring for Quaker resources, and both black and white children were taught in the Quaker schools.

Oakdale School Lincoln, VA, photograph, historic architecture — The One-Room Oakdale School operated from 1815 – 1885

Lincoln likely was a significant hub along the Underground Railroad. Quaker and mapmaker Yardley Taylor of Evergreen was the one Loudouner formally accused of aiding slaves while the Underground Railroad was operating, and Quakers in Lincoln and stories of slaves moving northward to crossings on the Potomack River were often linked.

After the Civil War, the village was named Lincoln (after Abraham Lincoln). By then it had its own post office, two stores, an iron foundry, a tanyard, an undertaking business, a milling shop, a tin shop, and a livery stable, among other businesses.

For more images of the area visit our photo gallery by clicking or paste http://www.pbase.com/mosbyheritage/philomont2lincoln in your browser.

Also visit “Small Town Virginia” – a photographic project to capture the quaintness of our Virginian hamlets during the quiet hours.

Tag: landscape photography by J Riley Stewart

A tool for taking better pictures, and it costs nothing

Travel Through Virginia History: Quaker Land from Philomont to Lincoln, Virginia

Philomont

Lincoln