Mr. Rural Americana I hadn’t picked up a camera since the seventies, when my children were small and I did my best to boost Kodak stock prices. What prompted me, three decades later and now retired, to return to photography was largely happenstance. My wife and I had just finished building a vacation home near Lake Tahoe. Aware that there would be vast expanses of wall space to decorate and lacking an art budget, we weighed “economy” options. I had recently bought my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D60. Casting an eye at all of the farm and ranch land surrounding our getaway cabin, Pat said, “Why don’t you go out and take pictures of local barns with the new camera?” Indeed, why not. Over a period of months – fall through spring – I drove about, looking for barns I might deem suitable for wall art.