PIONEER VILLAGE SCENES

Pioneer Village is located northwest of Saukville, Wisconsin, about 30 miles north of Milwaukee.  It consists of perhaps 25 buildings from the late 19th century and very early 20th century that were disassembled and then reassembled on the grounds of Pioneer Village.  The grounds are compact, so it is easy to tour the site in a relatively short period of time.  I have visited the venue with my camera a few times in the past.  This was my first visit this year.  Here is some of what I came away with.

The first is a black & white of a wheelchair ramp along the side of one of the buildings.  Not great, but I liked the shot for the composition, including the shadows the railing was casting on the ramp.

Several of the reconstructed buildings were built of dovetailed timbers that had never been painted and show great weathering of the wood, as in the following shots.

I especially liked the composition of this second shot that featured both a window and the dovetailed timbers.

Associated with this same building was a wooden silo, which was interesting on the inside, looking up.

The following black & white of a corn crib was somewhat cliched, but I liked it anyway.

Many of the buildings, while structurally sound, exhibit deferred maintenance, including the following screen door, which I thought presented an interesting composition.

Here is another screen door shot that I have taken on previous visits but I still think is worthy for the unusual design of the corner panel that holds the screen in place.  I intentionally set the lens for a shallow depth of field and focused on the screen, leaving the scene behind out of focus.

All of the buildings at the venue are filled with artifacts from the same time period as the buildings.  Here are a couple of those.

The second shot isn't great, but the light coming through a side window was doing a great job of illuminating the wheel.

One of the featured buildings is a reconstructed train station, including a caboose.  The caboose apparently was part of the Milwaukee Road system, at one time a prominent Midwestern railway line, now defunct.

Speaking of signs, I enjoyed the following, even though in fine print it appears to have been created relatively recently.

The caboose is in fairly good shape, but it does include some paint failure, as in the following shot.

Ugly but interesting.

My favorite of this series, though, is a relatively simple shot of lace curtains in a window of one of the reconstructed homes on site.  There was an ample amount of light coming through the window, which made catching all of the lace in good focus a lot easier.

John