We wanted to share a little bit about our transition back to the south and I thought about showing all the everyday photos from NYC vs. all the photos from life on the farm lately…but we have so many from just the past seven months around the south, we decided to just keep things focused on our new surroundings. I always hear a lot of photographers say that they were just never inspired to walk about and shoot around the city — I guess for some people it worked and for others not. I think I’m somewhere in between, but I do know I’ve probably shot as much personal work in the last seven months as I did in two years in New York. Soo…here goes. We traded this:
For this:
Above is the view of my family’s farm in Western NC from our front yard. We were a little hesitant at first (me more so than Whitney to a large degree) to be here, but its really been a cool thing to be back around family and our oldest friends for the first time in many years. We’re pretty good at going with the flow, but I guess we always have a little bit of restlessness/wanderlust when we get too comfortable in any given locale. We like to say we have no plans to stay and no plans to leave! But, really we’re enjoying our time here and learning to be comfortable and settled in that restlessness. We think its always been a strength that keeps us on our toes and inspired.
This place is a bit of a special case too — this was land that belonged to my grandparents and has been in the family for 70 years or more. The photo below is shot from nearly the same spot as the newer one above from probably 40 or so years ago back when this was my grandparents front yard (my grandfather is second from the left in the back with the glasses — those are all his brothers and sisters in his company there).
A couple more — one newer from the late 80′s/early 90′s and one much older. Thats our house in the background there..we’ve updated it quite a bit, stay tuned for more on that….
This is the view from the above carport today — while these photos were from last summer, spring really is coming on strong and early for us down here. Its been really beautiful lately — raised garden beds are being built this week and we haven’t run any heat or air in 2 weeks…just open windows and a cool breeze!
Some of our new neighbors that we’ve been getting pretty attached to:
Whitney in the front yard in one of her dresses….
Lots of beautiful mountains and rivers ready to be tamed this spring and summer….and pools too!
My Mom’s 15 year old border collie who has been around since I was just a middle school punk came to live with us too..Bandi is probably the most loyal and attentive dog on earth. She’s lost her hearing, but she’s a herder..so she seems to respond better to hand signals and body language than any dog I’ve ever met does to voice commands.
And of course, there’s Dexter. He doesn’t really listen either — not for lack of ability though. He’s usually just distracted by getting belly rubs all the time.
Whitney actually has room to spread out a bit and work on developing new lines from the house. But, she’s getting ready to move into a workshop we’ve rented for her in town — 200 bucks a month folks, 1700 square feet. Not sure how our pals up north are going to feel about that price to square footage situation there. Just kidding (sort of), we all know city vs. country is a give and take.
And in general, there’s just a whole lot of peacefulness happening around here..
Oh, and one other little thing. We’re having a baby!
More soon!
– Dustin
