The second day of my Arkansas vacation began with me driving down to an old water grist mill, located just west of Pierce City, Missouri and just south of Highway 60, called Jolly……its one of those water mills built before the Civil War that miraculously escaped the harm and wrath of the war and was restored by a group of concerned citizens a few years ago too. I photographed several old mills several years ago, and there are some websites and books devoted to old mills across the country and around the world. I like to photograph old mills and old barns that are well taken care of, they make great backdrops for modeling work too.

I had talked to a young guy who lives just south of there and he agreed to meet me there Saturday morning and shoot some photos with me, so I pulled in about 8:15 am and not seeing him there, turned Missy loose in the parking lot for a few minutes while I got my camera and prepared to shoot the old mill. There were a few fly fishermen in the stream, which is Capps Creek, spring fed and runs into Shoal Creek which feeds Grand Falls at Joplin, and is maintained by the Conservation Department who stocks it with brown trout for the fishermen. There is an old steel truss bridge on either end above and below the Mill and there is a high water manmade dam next to the mill that creates the millpond just above the mill…

 

…and a big ole Sycamore tree right behind the mill blocks pretty much any view from the millside of the stream below it too…the main problem with photographing the mill, I found out, is that the property on the other side of the mill is marked private, no trespassing, and that would be the ideal position to be to photograph it properly, but I decided not to put my waders on nor venture over to the other side. I`m big on getting reflections in my photos when possible, but opted against it this time. I settled for what I could get on the parking lot side of the mill. Due to the millpond there is a split in the creek so one can get some reflections of the mill itself in this smaller creek from the millside…

 

and then if you walk around to the east side of the mill, the group that restored the mill, built a concrete walkway to the dam and this is the view from the end of it by the dam…

 

..a nice view of the back of the mill…

About 8:30 am, Derek and his brother Nicholas showed up and found me phtoographing the mill from the little creek and using some of my filters on the photos….after talking a bit, we started shooting. I explained to both of them how I used to photograph old mills and would incorporate guys into the scenes in overalls or holie jeans, sometimes just sitting or standing next to the mill, leaning into the walls, or even sitting out on the dam or edge of the millrace by the mill, fishing with a cane pole and bobber…so Derek put on some overalls and we started shooting….

 

for someone who had never modeled before, Derek took to it like a duck takes to water…

 

the reflections on the creek down in this light were a bit dull…so we walked over and shot some photos up against the mill building itself and around to the side…

 

then I took him to the downstream side and shot him under the old sycamore tree where there was a little stone platform sticking out into the creek a bit…Derek turned out to be a natural poser too, needing little direction from me…

 

 and then we walked over the upstream side where the walkway was…I knew that it would be tight up there due to the confined space there..but he pulled it off once again very well on his own…kicked myself for not having a cane pole and bobber on this trip….

 I had him switch back to his jeans and we walked up the little creek to a footbridge that had some beautiful light filtering down thru the trees to it…

 

and never ceasing to amaze me, Derek plopped down on the bridge and looked down into the water….

 

 and looked so good, I took a closer up view….

 

we quickly discovered tho, that the reflections in the water on the downstream side were a bit duller than the upstream side, so after taking a few more closeups….

 

 

…we moved around to the upstream side and shot from there, Derek of course had the easy job of just turning around to pose while Nicholas and I hoofed it upstream to set up again, lol.

 

and we started finding reflections all over on this side of the bridge…

 

…def should have moved up here sooner….

 

oh well, this way at least we were able to get a variety of photos and from every angle conceivable too…after shooting alot of photos up on this end, we drove down to the lower steel bridge, the old road bridge which is now a footbridge and picnic area even….

 

and this is where we stopped shooting at, although I hope to work with both of them again soon, I wasnt able to photograph Nicholas even though he had a hot look too, he didnt want to take away from the session with his brother……and when it came time to leave, Derek and Nicholas took me out to Neosho a faster and shorter route, saving me time and gas to get on the road on Hwy 71 south to Arkansas….