Places: The Farm

Summertime once again brought my family (the six of us, and also including one set of grandparents, 2 uncles, 1 aunt, 2 cousins, and 1 second cousin) together in south Georgia, in the sleepy little town of Andersonville. You may (or may not) recognize the name from the pages of history. During the Civil War, or The War of Northern Aggression as some call it, Andersonville was home to one of the most terrible prisons for a Yankee to find himself in. It was a cruel place and thousands of people died there. Now it is a National Park with a cemetery which looks like a smaller version of Arlington. Just for fun, let me set the scene with images borrowed from google...(I did not take these):

Andersonville Prison, 1864

Andersonville Prison sight, today

Adjoining cemetery...it is several acres, and quite a sight.

They made a movie about it too..

The town of Andersonville. It is seriously this cute, and only about 1 block in length..


So there is your history lesson for today. Ok, so that is a little depressing and has no relation to why we gather there. But I love Civil War history and have always found it a very interesting place to visit. By coincidence only, Andersonville happens to be the location of my great uncle's farm. You can use "farm" loosely, because really it is just a whole lot of land, for the sport hunting and fishing enthusiast. He also raises chickens for Tyson on one section, and hunting dogs on another. Anyway...it is a fun place to gather and hang out for a week, in a very non-traditional-family-vacation sort of way. Anyway, I am really rambling. I have lots to share, but instead of lumping it all in one post, I thought I would split it up. So in this post, I just wanted to share some of the scenery and experiences that can be found in and around the farm. Enjoy.

This is the view from the front porch of the main house. I love wide open space! It thunderstormed quite a bit, so there were lots of fun skies to photograph.

Crazy-cool flowers! I love this one!


And regular wild flowers...

The backside of a sunflower. I just liked this shot. It's actually from a market down the street from the farm.

Zinnias and Sunflowers! This field was full of them! And this is a preview of what is to come in one of my family shoots!

Playing with that macro lens adapter again!

There was a 3 week old litter of puppies to play with. They were sooo cute! If you need good huntin' dogs... let me know!

This is what the farm is all about! Every year we run this poor jeep to death! If there is nothing else to do, trailblazing in the jeep can provide endless entertainment. There are countless interconnected trails through acres and acres and acres of wooded land on the farm. In past years we have also 1)popped a tire, 2) caught it on fire, 3)let it roll into a tree. It's a tough piece of automobile! This year I decided to pay homage to the grand vehicle. I took it out and parked it on the trail and proceed to photograph it like it was for a Jeep ad. haha. It was fun... but seriously, who does that? haha. Me I guess.

HDR what?

We also drive around at dusk hoping to spot deer. These were 30 second exposures... I just like the motion and colors, really.


These I like to call "The First 48". I am a big fan of that show. Driving around at night in the jeep through the woods inspired me to take some creepy photos of what I saw. At first I wanted to lay in the grass and partially on the road like a body. Because, it just seemed like you could roll up on a body around any bend... or zombies or something equally scary. That did not work out however because of the crazy amounts of fire ants in GA. No way was I getting on the ground with those suckers around. Anyway, it was like 11 pm and I made my brother go with me.. I was too scared to go alone! Haha. I am really pleased with how they turned out. It's the not knowing what is beyond the light that is so creepy to me.



More to come! Sorry this post is random!