Into the Great Unknown
I went with my aunt from Atlanta to my ‘other home’ in Aiken, SC this weekend to visit my parents. Always good to escape from home #1 to home #2. It’s a great getaway weekend and only 3 hours away. I lived there for 11 years, and while I’m more suited at this stage of my life for city life, I need regular doses of my small town home.
While I was there, i had a perfect overcast day for a photo journey.
I headed out in my little SUV to see what photo-worthy subjects were around the corner. Boy, did I find them. Planned on forty-five minutes and ended up dragging myself back home an hour and a half later.
I came across a big wild dinousar plastered on a pink house with sunflowers growing all over the front yard, and in chalkboard – written next to the dino – someone had simply written “Vote!’
And right next door there was a pale pink mailbox in front of a pale pink, old Ford truck, with pink and black dice hanging appropriately from the rearview window. Someone had painted “Willy’s” (Willy, perhaps?!!) in pale blue on the backlift. Oh yeah…picture worthy indeed -I captured every angle possible. But it didn’t stop there……all sorts of campy art was covering the front porch of the pink mailbox house (yes, next to the dinosaur house!).
I also came upon a colorful horse statue in the middle of downtown that had horse sayings in different colors written all over its body. More good stuff to fill up my camera card.
Probably my personal favorite shots though were a couple of old-timers’ smiling faces – country folk who drove by in their trucks to check out what i was doing, slowed down and allowed me to catch them.
Considering i had set out to add to my repertoire of Aiken shots to use for a gallery downtown, I found what i was looking for and way more I wasn’t looking for. I’d struck gold on my spontaneous adventure.
This outing encouraged me to do this more often in my own home town. There’s a surprise around every corner if you keep your photography eye open, and I loved being able to go home after a short, fun stint – just doing my job – with a final result I couldn’t be happier with.
So, thank you God for sending me such a vast array of unexpected craziness and for giving me the eye to see them as I do. And for such a rare, unusually sophisticated, small town I also call home.
As a photographer, it made me realize the value in just setting out the door with no plan – only to look, see, shoot, and smile.
