Colorful Barns Enliven the Winter Landscape

I picked up my camera bag and the dogs, ever vigilant of my actions, raced to the back door.  They've learned that grabbing my photography gear signals we're going for a ride to take pictures.  I set out headed towards the Lighthouse, thinking I might use pictures there as the subject for my next blog.  But on the way, I got sidetracked at the sweeping curve of North Lighthouse Point Road.  Beautiful red farm buildings looked  stunning against the white snow and the partly blue sky.  Suddenly, I had a firm topic; I decided to see how many red barns I might find within Leelanau Township.  Although the partially sunny skies didn't last, I found six during my afternoon jaunt.  When I got home and loaded my digital negatives onto my computer, I was surprised that all six shared a similar shade of barn red.  Turns out there are reasons why barns are often red.  Farmers used linseed oil to paint their barns and mixed either blood from a a recent slaughter or ferrous oxide (rust) to the oil to give it the reddish color known as barn red.  It was also fashionable to have a red barn in contrast to the traditional white farmhouse.  Finally, as paints began to be made using chemical pigments, red was the cheapest color to produce.

Information about barn red was taken from http://home.howstuffworks.com/question635.htm.