A Year In The Garden (In Progress)

A dear friend, and patron of mine asked if I would document an entire year of change on her 80 acres of land.  The land is crowned with a beautiful house designed by Pietro Belluschi and surrounded by an amazing garden that appears to always be in some state of bloom and further adorned with a pool and pool house designed by Michael McCulloch.  The place is often written about by architecture and gardening magazines, bloggers, and enthusiasts.

To spend a day at Westwind Studio Farm is an amazing experience full of inspiration and new sights.  But, how to keep that “new eye” every month for an entire year?  The garden’s size and variety helped tremendously.  The mood and color palette changed with every visit.  The tricky bit was that after a year passed, I then only figured out how to see the place.  Instead of trying to construct series of repeatable shots and sequences, and to try and shoot as much as possible.  Leaving me to scurry around the 80 acres working up a sweat and running out of breath and strength to carry my gear.  It was on the last visit, I was tired, I was a little bored, and I decided simply to sit down and stare.  It was then that I finally saw hummingbirds and was able to film them.  I was able to then hear the music of a million bees working up and down the hillside.  I even caught a coyote walking in an open meadow in the middle of the day.

It was frankly a sad revelation.  At the end, finally figuring out how to start.

Now, comes the second phase of work, to start the editing process of a year’s worth of footage.  And with this footage, to find the narratives and lines to follow.  There is no expectation on what the final product is to be, which is liberating.  The narrative will be that of the land, not of the humans that inhabit it.

The adjacent video is and early screentest.