Summer Sun at Sunshine Acres
"Where did I put that battery charger?" I think, as I rummage through the clutter in my room. It's mid September and I'm excitedly foraging through my belongings looking for things to take with me on my road trip in a couple of days. The first leg will be a 12 hour drive to visit my sister's hobby farm, affectionately known as Sunshine Acres. Second leg is an 8 hour drive to a campground in West Virginia, and finally another 8 hours or so back home to Virginia.
Seeing as Sunshine Acres is a far more picturesque locale than my parents' house in the suburbs, I decided it would be a good time to knock the dust off of my camera and start practicing photography again while I visited. I finally found the camera battery charger, and then realized I had lost my spare memory cards. I finally found the memory cards, and then realized I had never replaced my camera carrying case. "Just have to make do", I say, grabbing a black canvas shoulder bag from the storage tub of medieval clothing and cloaks I had packed to use for potential photo shoots.
I had only vague shots or themes in mind; I just grabbed enough clothes and accessories to give me some options. The vast majority of shoots that I do are mostly unplanned, once I set my camera on the tripod the shots suddenly begin crystalizing around vague ideas from earlier in the day or week.
One goal that I did have in mind was to get at least one nice picture of my hair while it's still long. I prefer both the look and maintenance levels of short hair, and I've been wanting to cut it short for quite awhile. I was so sure that when I grew my hair long that I would always be styling it in fun new ways and having fun, but after a lifetime of hair maintenance that consisted of 8-in-1 men's shower products and a quick swipe of the towel to dry, I was utterly unprepared for how much work it is to make long hair look presentable. I like the idea of being old and having fun pictures showing me at the different phases in my life, so I wanted at least one or two pictures to document what my hair looked like at this stage of my life.
So how much effort did I put into styling my hair as I created these visual time capsules? Exactly zero. I wasn't actually planning on doing a "real" photo shoot as I grabbed my camera and started traipsing around the farm looking for a nice spot to practice. It had been so long since I had taken pictures that I had literally forgotten how to use my camera and its settings, so I just wanted to take a few practice shots. I decided not to worry too much about getting any amazing shots or finding the perfect angles and backgrounds. All I wanted to do was to get back on the bike and remember how to turn those pedals. Boy, had I forgotten a lot!
"Oh what a lovely grove of trees there" you might be saying. "That dappled tree-filtered light looks so peaceful." Yes yes, it looks peaceful in person, but the first thing I thought when I looked at the raw photos was, "OH MY GOD, why did I shoot in dappled light?!" Looks great in person, but it can be a real pain when editing later. The bright and dark spots don't always translate well to 2D images and can look more like hot spots and shadowy blobs. Oh well, lesson re-learned.
Another thing I had forgotten is just exactly how BLINDINGLY PALE I am. When I first attempted to take the above shot, everything was great. Well, almost everything. The greenery was in focus, evenly exposed, the colors of the flowers showed up well, and the sky wasn't washed out or anything. However, there was a bone white silhouette resting in the foreground whose luminescent white skin could give pale crawlers a run for their money. I honestly wish I had saved the original shot because it was kind of hilarious how shockingly overexposed my skin was, haha!
Living in a more southern latitude than my sister, I always underestimate how much sooner the flowers and plants begin to die down up there. I was glad to be able to get at least one shot with a few of the colorful flowers around the farm. One day I'd like to do a shoot when the farm is in full bloom with all of the flowers, flowering trees, gardens, and wildflowers. It's no exaggeration when I say that at this point there must be thousands of flowering plants all around the farm.
(Below: Apollo the goat, this is not a picture of me)
I've been on a bit of a mid-century kick lately. While I haven't started wearing high-waisted bell bottoms (yet) or covered my walls in wood paneling, my wardrobe has welcomed in several corduroy items, as well as a wave of brown, tan, and brick-orange clothing. There's something about nature spaces that let time become flexible and blurry. Donning my retro tee and brown shorts, removed from the noises of traffic and and towering billboards, it was easy to feel like I was slipping back in time. It felt like I could've walked inside the house to turn on the TV to watch the moon landing. In other shoots when I walked through the trees wearing a tunic or cloak, I felt like I could've stepped out of the trees and seen a row of daub and wattle homes along the edge of the field. Other times when I'm in marshy and wild areas that remind me of the pictures of prehistoric nature books I read as a boy, I truly felt as if there were dinosaurs just out of sight.
That's the general feel I decided to go with, something that was just slightly out of time, but could just as easily be happening today. That liminal feeling where the past bleeds into the present just a little bit, and you begin to feel a retro-futuristic nostalgia for something you are experiencing right here and now. The 60s/70s aesthetic has popped up in my camping gear as well, and no surprise there considering that's also another time when I'm surrounded by nature. Pulling from the comforts and simplicity of the past (whether real or idealized) has given me a sort of clarity and stability as I've started this new chapter in my life. There's something pulling me back to old fashioned ways and practices, while also urging me on towards something sleek, shiny, and futuristic. I feel as though I'm being called to transform myself into a man who is outside of time, just as the trees are both here and there.
During this particular road trip, I did a LOT of unplugging. More than one thing was disconnected from my mind and put on the shelf for a rest, but the main thing was the internet. It felt so grounding and healing to just walk the earth with my bare feet, to look up at the sky and feel small, and to leave my phone behind as I took a walk down to the river to do some good ol' thinkin. It really highlighted the idea that more information does not always equal more clarity, and more stimulation does not always equal more excitement and fun.
It felt nice just to watch the cats being silly with each other, and to hear the plop of the frogs in the koi pond, and to walk past the fields just playing my strumstick and singing to myself. It was a much needed reset.
It was also a low-stress, calm way to ease myself back into creating art. I knew once I got the ball rolling again that it would be fun and fulfilling, but until then it felt like a looming, overwhelming challenge that I didn't know how to start. "If the pictures look bad, I just won't use them. It'll just be a nice walk around the farm and I'll remember a little bit more about using my camera."
Thankfully, things did eventually start trickling in again. Despite a rocky start of overexposures, out of focus shots, and so many terrible facial expressions, I started to remember the flow and groove of shooting.
The chains need to be oiled and the tires are a little flat, but the bicycle is rolling forward once again! The ideas and goals I've begun creating are still somewhat nebulous, and I'm taking things one day at a time, but I can say that I feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel now. The energy inside of me is starting to swirl and glow again, and a sort of peace has started gently nudging out the painful memories of the past.
It feels like the first step on a winding road through the forest. Something beautiful, something wild, something outside of time. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel scared. But most importantly, it makes me feel.
