Dad called me last week to tell me they were taking the old Spencer place down and asked me to come take a picture before they burned it.  The Spencer house was one of the oldest houses around where I grew up, we think as early as Civil War time.  Then it sat empty for a good sixty years in the field adjoining ours, so it was the main site of my first trespassing.  I wasn’t a bad trespasser.  I never wrote on the walls or damaged the place or left any indication I had been there.   Mostly, I ratted around in the attic looking for interesting fragments from old Saturday Evening Post’s and wandered around looking out the windows like a ghost.  It always felt, stepping into the house, that you might have just missed someone else stepping out.

I was glad to get to take Ada for a visit and to watch how she was just as enthralled with the place as I had been.  Old houses like that have a kind of magic in them.  When I think about all the abandoned houses I’ve known that are gone now, I wish I had photographs of them.  I may have to take this on as a personal project, because as land prices rise, local farmers push to put every acre they have into production.   As much as it bothers me, and it does, nostalgia doesn’t pay the property tax bill.  Corn does.

Casey came down from Charleston for her senior pictures.  She did such a great job in her session!   And while I have many favorites, I liked how these two images go together.  I thought I’d already posted these, but it turns out I’d posted the first picture on Facebook shortly after her session and tagged Casey in it which is my favorite way to show sneak peaks from sessions.  If you have a session with me and have a FB account remind me to friend you, so that I can share a sample from your session that much faster.

Devan is from Tampa, but stays with family in the area for a month each summer.   Debbie Phillips scheduled a session for her and after discussing Devan’s style with her in person we pushed for an urban grunge/nocturn look in many of her outdoor images, which basically means I cracked out the big box and portable studio light and was like, “Let’s play!”  Devan is only sixteen, but very confident in front of the camera and channeled a lot of moodiness and style with little effort.  Fun session.  Here are a couple of favorites.

I’m behind on the blog and need to post some sessions from the past couple of weeks.  First up is Ryan and Julie’s engagement session.  We had fun hanging out.  They’re a great couple, and I look forward to their wedding this fall.

We shot the first half of Taylor’s senior session last week.  Here is a quick diptych of her images from the flower patch chosen over her fun studio images, mostly because I seem to be obsessed with flowers lately.    The flowers will be gone soon enough, then my blog will be flower-free.    Anyway, I had a great time hanging out with Taylor, her mom, Lisa, and her friend, Katie.  Thanks to each of you for doing such a great job helping our shoot go well!

Colin is six and Alex is three and our mission during their photo session was to have fun.  I know I did.  Here are a couple of favorites from the last part of their session.   Thanks, Colin and Alex and Christina!

I got to meet the handsome and wonderful Jady Logan a couple of weeks ago.  Just looking at him makes me happy.  He has the most amazing blue eyes — just like his mother!   I got to look at his eyes a lot, since I’ve never seen a four week old fight sleep as hard as Jady.  He was so content awake that it was fine.  Such a dear sweet boy.

Here’s the front and back of their birth announcements, which I think are mailed out by now, so safe to post here.