Chester Barn

The Olsen Barn in Chester, CA, a place I had been hoping to find one day that I happened to stumble upon by accident.

I had a commission project last winter for a photo of Lake Almanor. I had a friend in Chester, which is on the north side of the lake, so I thought I would start the day there before spending the day exploring the area. Once I got to the town, I drove to the other edge of it, and there, in the open meadow, was this grand old barn I had seen online that I was hoping to find someday. I was so stunned to just stumble across this that it took me a minute to gather myself. Before I saw my friend, I had to get a closer look. I walked the meadow, explored the barn, and saw exactly where I would want to shoot this. The grass was smooshed down because of the recent snow, frost, and ice, so I told myself, "as soon as it gets warmer and the grass stands back up, I want to come back and shoot this at sunrise."

Warmer weather had come, and it was looking like a good sunrise was coming. The only problem was, sunrise was at 5:30am and Chester was just shy of a 3 hour drive. So rather than waking up at 2am, I opted to drive up the night before and sleep in my car to be there for the sunrise. 

I got to the parking lot around 11pm, made my bed in the back of my car and tried to get some sleep. I got out of my car around 5am and started walking toward the barn. The sky was full of clouds I hoped would light up, and the meadow was full of tall brown and green grass. The mosquitos were horrendous, I tried to cover as much of my body as I could, but still couldn't quite do enough to keep them from biting me. I found my spot, set up my tripod and camera and waited to see what kind of sunrise I was going to get.

It wasn't the explosion I was hoping for, and I thought I would have to go back one day for a better one. I didn't look at the photos for about a month because I just assumed I would be going back there. But when I finally looked at them, it was something different then my usual. The deep purples with a subtle orange and pink line at the horizon, the massive old barn in the tall grass, it seemed to work better than I thought it did.