Photobook 3: Farmscapes

Third in a series of articles introducing my new photobook which are now on sale at blurb.com.

As a photographer, I love landscape photos - seeing expanses of land in a photograph in National Geographic or anywhere else for that matter, always makes me smile, appreciate some aspect of my world that someone was able to capture with a camera. Over time, I've come to really appreciate an altered form of the landscape photograph - that is, landscapes that feature farm scenes, or farmscapes. This collection, the second section of my photobook, is a record of the reasons why I live where I do.

We looked all around for houses - but even before we moved to Pennsylvania, we knew we would move to Halifax eventually. I suppose the housing market could have changed our minds - but I wanted a couple of mountains between myself and the city (and downriver, the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant). I also wanted a small town life - where my children could go to school and get to know almost everyone - not to be lost in the system. We looked at a map, and said, "That's the place."

Mostly, I loved the countryside. When I first came to Pennsylvania, it was in May or June, I believe... and when I looked out over the valley where Halifax sits next to the big river, the first thing I noticed was the patchwork quilt of greens. Cornfields and other crops, bordered by forests, grain silos and old barns in the distance. And everything was so very bright and green and ALIVE.

And with that introduction, I present the farmscapes collection. From the introductory page:

Central Pennsylvania is a patchwork of farmlands and forests with small towns dotted here and there across the countryside. When I first came to Pennsylvania, I drove up over Peter's Mountain into Upper Dauphin County and pulled off at the parking area atop the mountain. When I looked out over the early summer green and saw the patchwork of farms and forests in the valley below, I was sold. I went back to work and within a few days had accepted the job offer I'd been given. The rural countryside varies from a snow-covered landscape during the winter months, a bright green and flowery spring, miles and miles of cornfields in the summertime, to colorful autums. It is not only the natural scenes which inspire, but also those which combine the man-made scenes with the natural ones, rural landscapes - or farmscapes.

All images copyright 2005-2008 James A. Wheeler or Karen Oudeman.

Contact me at arkansawyer@gmail.com for information on obtaining copies of any of these prints or information on the upcoming 160 page photobook, which will be a "coffee table" style hardcover book complete with paper sleeve cover, initially priced around $60 - which to my cheapskate pocketbooks seems high until I compare the cost to that of eating out at a nice restaurant, which for a family can quickly exceed the cost of this book, and is quickly forgotten.

The series so far:
Photobook 1: The Story
Photobook 2: The Church
Photobook 3: Farmscapes
Photobook 4: Country Living
Photobook 5: Waterscapes
Photobook 6: Wildlife