Sarah Ann Atkins
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The Secret is Out

6/24/2015

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In January of 2014, I called the Steins Unlimited Museum in Pamplin, Virginia to arrange what I thought would be a simple tour of a stuffy exhibit room likely coated in a thin layer of dust due to frequent disuse. Please, no plexiglass, I remember thinking. There's just about nothing less exciting than photographing exhibits behind plexiglass. My hopes were high as I followed the route from Richmond towards Appomattox, the snowy landscape elevating my spirit. Google images and web searches had left me completely in the dark on this museum, and, even so, I was surprised when I pulled up to a ranch-style home a little less than an hour later. This just got interesting, I grinned.
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The door was answered by an older couple who graciously invited me into a living room adorned with steins. I was greeted on my immediate left by their oldest, dating all the way back to 1594. It reminded me of Indiana Jones' Last Crusade. I knew you would come, it spoke to me. You must choose.

That's the cup of a carpenter, I nodded.

There were two bedrooms dedicated to their assortment along with a few kitchen shelves. They kept their most prized vessels inside their home while the body of their collection was housed in a building out back, a structure at least half as big as their home.
George Adams led me out the back door to the storage shed where I learned he was born and raised in Germany. He began his compilation and a lifetime of beer knowledge at a young age and now has one of the largest collections of antique steins in the world along with one of the world's largest measuring in at 32 liters.
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I was fascinated by a yellowing refrigerator with a single Yuengling tap protruding from the door. Out of all the American beers he had sampled, he told me Yuengling tasted the most German-authentic. I was somewhat pleased with myself as I recalled my college days. Yuengling was our house beer. I also wondered if George had tasted many local brews. I found myself wanting to bring him a sampling of Virginia's finest, challenging him to find one that reminded him even more of home. He invited me to return in the summer with friends and our steins, saying we'd crack open a keg of Yuengling and all chat in the garden. I have yet to take him up on this, but I really should.
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George also buys, sells, appraises and repairs pewter steins, so before leaving I made a purchase. I love bringing home memories from my travels, so I picked out a flagon picturing a fox on one side and a wild turkey on the other, adorned with an acorn pewter lid. It was the perfect find. To this day, however, I've only used it for drinking tea. Is this sacrilege?
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I was blown away by his collection to say the least. Stand-alone tankards and sets lined the entrance room consisting of two rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves. The record-holder sat at the head of a row, hard to miss. He even had several regimental steins from WWII soldiers complete with names. (Did you know soldiers were issued steins?) Steins of all shapes, colors, sizes and pictorials could entertain me for hours, especially since he had stories for so many. I had to stop asking about each one, I realized, if I was going to get any work done.
In the end, I shook hands and departed one of the best-kept secrets in central Virginia.

P.S. Did I mention I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I grew up?
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Playing A Pirate

6/17/2015

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On a cold morning in March, 2012, I was rattling in my boots amongst the dark, constructed wharf of Philadelphia. The sun hadn't come up, and I was shivering in somewhat silent solidarity with a rep of the Virginia Film Office. Catherine was her name. She had a tremendous love for and knowledge of film. Our breath rolled out in thick puffs as we shared our favorite movies. We had Miyazaki in common, I remember.

Twenty minutes roll by and the sunrise is finally in our favor. We sprang into action! Or rather, I began losing myself in the surrounding back-lot while she monitored.

I climb aboard a sailing ship that was built for HBO's John Adams miniseries back in 2007 and proceed to walk, crouch and climb around the deck with the camera held up to my face. I wasn't only a photographer that morning, I was a pirate whose ship sailed the open plains in search of land-locked marinas and abandoned cities whose motto was "leave no trace" and "photo or it didn't happen." When you truly get caught up in a scene like this, the world fades away as you search for the perfect angle and composition, as many an artist can attest. Sometimes I find my body in awkward or unperceived positions as the world begins to fill back in around me upon capturing the desired frame, and this time I found myself laying on the deck of the ship. The VFO rep snapped this photo of me caught up in the occasion. You can see my breath condensing in the cold. #JustPirateThings

Known simply as the State Farm, this 3,000 acre historic backlot is 30 minutes outside Richmond and features a period farm first created for John Adams, battlefields and trenches dug out for Lincoln, a jail and plenty of pristine landscapes. Also filmed on location have been AMC's TURN and Randall Wallace's Point Of Honor.
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Constructed alongside the sailing ship was a paddle wheeler, the reproduced exterior of the River Queen used in Spielberg's 2012 Lincoln.
I had never set foot on a backlot before and gained a new appreciation of the facade structures that morning with their exposed posterior beams and unfinished interiors. The best part was having the run of the place and, of course, catching the simultaneous, half-frozen golden hour (oh, and playing a pirate).
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