By Jillian Bell
A common thread in my photography is simply searching for inspiration in everyday life. In this blog we are attempting to find inspiration within a stressful situation. I have the pleasure to live in a historic Victorian home, built in 1905. It has always been my intention to fix it up and hopefully sell it in a few years. As all "home improvement" projects go, I am six years into it, and nowhere near the end. Honestly, I was used to the look of half finished projects and desperately needed some energy to finish. To my surprise I was about to get that added energy. May 22, 2011 a tornado flew over my house and cosmetically damaged most of the interior and exterior walls. Six months later, it is December. The siding and roofing has been taken care of. Moving to the interior walls, construction teams have completely gutted the walls revealing only studs. I am thankful being a Technical Representative for Tamron. This opportunity allowed a 2 month hotel stay to happen seamlessly. I go back to the home from time to time, taking photographs of the progress for my scrapbook. There was one day, I was wandering around, cannot say if it was the lighting, or just stepping into the same scene with a new perspective, but I found my inspiration. It started with the first shot, a lonely lamp in the middle of an open floor plan. Maybe this symbolizes hope? (or) coming from a theater background, it's a ghost lamp, always on, giving light into an empty house. The next two are of the old radiators covered in layer after layer of paint. The light coming through the window caught my eye, and the pipe sticking straight out of the floor created a great vertical line. In all the photos below, I looked at the lines, and shapes created through the destruction. I contemplated turning them all B&W, thinking it would better reflect the 106 year old house. Overall, I converted only a few, to better show the lines and texture inside the frame. The next photo is of the floorboards from the room above. This is a forgotten storage space covered in layers of magazines for insulation. They were all from the 1920s, and randomly placed was a perfect portrait framed by a knot in the wood. The last photo is a view of the old chimney. I had never seen it not covered in sheet rock, and I was automatically drawn to the different layers of brick, cement, and wall paper. One of my biggest annoyances of the house when I was fixing it up was how many layers were on everything. Six or seven was common of paint and wallpaper. It was nice to see the walls stripped down. Overall, I have a rare look at the interior, unseen by anyone in decades. These photographs not only show progress, but show a glimpse of what the house used to look like. I went back today and new sheet rock was up, and I'll be picking out paint colors next week. It's amazing how drastically the same space can change in a few days.
As always, keep your eyes open for inspiration. Thank you for reading.
Every house has an angle where it looks beautiful from behind the lens of a camera, from the walls and pipes, to everything that lies inside it. I hope your house can be restored to its original beauty since it's been over a century ago when it was first built.
Posted by: Anthony Blommel | Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 02:56 PM
Getting all set up for the after photos. The house is now transformed and is dramatically different.
Posted by: Jillian Bell | Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 05:06 PM