June was a very productive month at the property! I rented a bull dozer and my parents helped my boyfriend and I clear some land.
I must admit that I envisioned posting stunning before and after photos that would leave a big impression on everyone who viewed them. I had hoped to capture the clearing of the land in progress, and while I took many photos, they are so drastically different that it’s difficult to tell that you’re looking at the same thing in two photos. So here are a few things I leared from my failed attempt at before and after photos.
- If you decide you want to take before and after photos, you should have a very good idea of where you’re going to be working. The places where I took the “before” photos were not the places where the most impact was visible “after.” As a result, I had to move slightly in the pictures to really capture the work that was done.
- Also, when you clear land, you change the landscape so severely that unless you make a point of including a specific, obvious landmark in both sets of photos, it’s very difficult to tell where you are. Create a landmark if you have to– tie a ribbon around a tree that won’t be felled or drive a shovel into a mound of dirt– just make sure that the landmark makes it into every picture. The best thing I could have used in my pictures was the outhouse, and while it is a very nice outhouse, I actually went out of my way to keep it out of the photos. It wasn’t until I got ready to post the pictures that I realized that I had missed out on the opportunity to really give my photos some impact.
- Better yet, put your camera in a stable spot, on a tripod if you can, and snap a photo every hour or so. Then, combine the photos into a time lapse.
- Panoramas aren’t that great for capturing a wide range of space if your surface isn’t flat. I feel like I have three levels at my property. There’s the lowest, least used area by the road. A sizeable hill up to the place where we have the outhouse and the fire ring. and a big hill up to the place where the cabin will go. I took two panoramas– one from the top level where I want to build and one from the level where the outhouse is. They’re nice to look at, but I don’t know that they really show how many trees we felled and how much more usuable space there is now.