Mark's Photo Travels

Sometimes an adventure in the warm, humid outdoors is preferable to staying inside in the comfortable yet confining indoors. Such an occasion was the Fourth of July holiday when frequent clouds made for a potentially tolerable day outdoors. I decided to visit two places close by: Frey Creek Falls near Wellford in Spartanburg County, and the Taylors Mill in Taylors, Greenville County. Frey Creek Falls I'm aware of only two waterfalls in Spartanburg County. Horseshoe Falls is a 10 foot waterfall on Cedar Falls Creek in the Musgrove Mill State Historic Site near Clinton, South Carolina. I visited this waterfall many years ago and remember finding the waterfall uninteresting. Frey Creek Falls is wider, more interesting waterfall on Frey Creek between Wellford and Spartanburg on Falling Creek Road near a Norfolk Southern Railroad trestle. As of the time of posting, Frey Creek Falls is clearly visible from this satellite view: Frey Creek Falls is located on land used as a par...

In Tigerville Trek , Tom Taylor and I hit many of my most wanted targets on the list that day, but not all. I took those most wanted targets, added a few more I found in various sources, and took a brief cruise around Taylors and Greer yesterday to visit them all. First stop today was Foothills Vocational Center, located off of Saint Mark Road in Taylors. From 1954-1970, this was Lincoln High School , a segregated high school for African-Americans. The school was closed because of integration in 1970, and in 1972 the site became Foothills Vocational Center. The name would later change to Foothills Career Center, then Foothills Career and Technology Career Center as times and needs changed. The site closed in 2001 and the career center relocated to the site of the old Greer High School. This history summarized from Jean Martin Flynn's book  An Account of Taylors, 1817-1994  (just re-read) and Executive Summary J. Harvey Bonds Career Center (PDF format). The roadside ne...

This time of year I like to stay indoors out of the heat and the humidity. This particular morning I was in the mood for an easy, quick photo trip before it got too warm. I've been looking at photos of old service stations from around South Carolina lately, and but none of the ones in Taylors. I certainly knew how to fix that, and this particular morning was that time. I parked at the Taylors branch library, first to check out the book  An Account of Taylors, South Carolina  by the late Jean Martin Flynn, and second to walk down West Main St. the short distance to what was Allison's Service Station. Allison's Service Station (seen above) is now a hair styling business. The gas tanks are long gone, replaced by an attractive, colorful flower bed. My second target was a former Esso station at the intersection of West Main St. and Wade Hampton Blvd. The place was packed with cars, so I just kept going. This photo I took in 2010 will do: This was originally Bomar...

Recently, Tom Taylor wrote two blog entries about superimposing a building from an old photo over a present day photo to create a composite. These two blog entries are titled Plantation Ruins and a Cursed Tree and Composite Greenville History . His blog entries reminded me I took photos of two locations back in 2011 with the idea of making my own composite photos, but I didn't have any way to create them back then. Or so I thought. I was wrong. I had bought a scanner a few years ago (only Amazon knows when) that came with a copy of Photoshop Elements 8, the simplified cousin of Photoshop. While Elements 8 doesn't directly support layer masking (the feature needed for making composites quickly and easily), it can be simulated in Elements 8 and can also be added by a plugin. Nice. It's doable and I don't have to spend any money. Even better. The two locations I visited in 2011 were the two Taylors, SC depots. The first location, the Southern Railway depot,  was lo...

I do confess: I love peaches! So yesterday, I took advantage of the season to buy a peck of locally grown peaches at Taylor's Orchard peach shed, a long-time fixture in Greer operated by  Fisher's Orchard  since 1997. While I was out and about I decided to take advantage of some free time to take photos of some of the small changes I've noticed in Taylors in the past few months. Update: The peach shed is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places . A few weeks ago, I noticed CSX railroad workers removed some of the cross-ties and have yet to replace them. I thought I'd be neat to take a photo before work on the bridge has been completed. I parked at nearby Covenant Community Church  on East Main Street and walked the short distance to the viaduct. No services or other activities were being held that day, otherwise I would have parked farther away to stay out of their way. At one time, this building was home to Stephenson Memorial United M...