Amish Motorcycle Travel Photographer Pennsylvania Buggy Pictures
Sometimes the best photographs are a result of serendipity…being in just the right place at just the right time. This photograph is truly one such example. Yes, I was up well before dawn and out on location with my Nikon Z7 camera and Nikkor 14-30MM wide angle zoom lens at first light, but I wasn’t looking for this image in particular. In actuality I was at this location simply to photograph the road; a vision I had for the cover of my Amazon #1 best selling road travel book, "Road Work: Images and Insights of a Modern Day Explorer". As I was in the process of capturing just this long, straight stretch of country back road at sunrise the Amish buggy rode into my picture from over my shoulder. Almost on cue the sun broke through the early morning clouds on the horizon illuminating the crops on either side of the road along with the ‘intruding’ buggy. It was breathtaking and I managed to squeeze off a couple of frames on my camera before it moved off into the distance and the sun disappeared behind the clouds again. My travels by motorcycle this year took me to the Amish Country near Lancaster, Pennsylvania on three different occasions. My motorcycle ventures often have a theme and the trips I made to this area of the country all revolved around creating dynamic photographic images of the Amish lifestyle. You will see other photographs here on my web site created during my numerous motorcycle adventures to the region. I am often asked to write about my travels to accompany the photographs I’ve made thereon. My trips to the Amish region were documented in numerous travel publications and online outlets in both the motorcycling and photographic industries. They also served as the back stories behind two chapters of my book. This is such a beautiful area of the country enhanced by the presence of a wonderful subset of society…the Amish and Mennonite people. Over the course of my visits I had the pleasure of meeting and interacting with members of this population, and couldn’t help but document their lifestyle (albeit discreetly) with my camera. The etiquette of photographing the Amish people is something that is greatly misunderstood. The best explanation I’ve read of it appears on the Discover Landcaster web site which says: "The Amish hold humility as a highly-cherished value and view pride as a threat to community harmony. Because items such as personal photographs can accentuate individuality and call attention to one's self, they are prohibited from the home. They want to be remembered by the lives they lived and the examples they left, not by physical appearance." In other words it is not disrespectful to photograph the people of this culture, but any photographs made should be made in the most discreet and respectful manner possible. I did not set out to create this specific photograph when I left my hotel room in the dark, but was truly rewarded for my efforts when this buggy rolled into my field of view at precisely the right moment in time.