Amish Lifestyle Photographer Buggy and Rainbow Pennsylvania Dutch Region
Michael ONeill Photographer Writer Motorcyclist Adventurer
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Amish Lifestyle Photographer Buggy and Rainbow Pennsylvania Dutch Region

Probably the most photographed subject, by travelers to The Amish Country in Pennsylvania, are the shots of Amish buggies moving through the beautiful rural landscape. There are a number of these shots right here on this web site. Nothing conjures up most people’s vision of the Amish lifestyle quite like these horse drawn carriages making their way around the countryside, traveling alongside more conventional and contemporary motor vehicles. I have been a frequent visitor to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area; home to a large Amish and Mennonite population, during my ventures as a long distance motorcycle traveler, photographer, writer, adventurer and author. In 2021 alone I made three visits to the Amish Country aboard my BMW F800GT sport touring motorcycle, and spent a tremendous amount of time out in the remote rural farm areas creating images of the Amish lifestyle…buggies moving along the back roads, farmers working their fields with horse drawn agricultural equipment and family gathered together at the end of a hard day’s work. This image was captured shortly after my arrival in the town of Bird-In-Hand, PA on a Sunday afternoon. I affectionately refer to Sundays in the Amish country as "rush hour", offering the best chance to capture images of Amish buggies in motion. You see, Sunday is church day and all of the people of this faith will be heading to church services early in the morning and returning home from those services early in the afternoon. On this particular Sunday afternoon a late summer rain storm was moving through the area and the dense clouds were moving away. I staked out a spot on the side of the road and didn’t have to wait long for an Amish buggy to come down the road, and as it reached the perfect spot I released the shutter on my camera and captured this image. Well…not exactly. I used a Nikon mirrorless camera fitted with a Nikkor zoom lens to capture the base image; but the rainbow was an element that existed only in my mind’s eye at that moment. The digital image was processed in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop software, using a stock photograph of the rainbow that I had captured previously in my home town of Northport, NY, to yield the finished image you see here. My "digital darkroom" used to create this magic, travels with me everywhere in the form of an Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer. A few of the back stories behind my trips to the Amish country in Pennsylvania are in my Amazon #1 bestselling road travel book; "Road Work: Images and Insights of a Modern Day Explorer", which is available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon; and is also available on Apple Books for IOS devices. As a photographer who creates content for the travel and hospitality industry I love visiting the Amish country of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. The beauty of the landscape and the customs of the wonderful Amish and Mennonite cultures are a photographer’s delight. As an adventure motorcyclist the area has it’s charms, too. Though the farm roads are often long and straight, they are sparsely traveled and offer wonderfully scenic views as they span the gentle rolling terrain of the Amish country.