I have been spending what I call "Country Saturdays" driving around the Northern Virginia area looking for landscapes that I can photograph or paint. I don't drive too far because these are only one-day trips and I don't want to use too much expensive gas. This last Saturday I went out to Fauquier County, which is in the foothills of the Shenandoah Valley. It is horse and wine country. You will find large estates with mansions, and wineries, many of them offering wine tastings. I thought of moving there some years ago, before I got my job in the city, but I couldn't find a dwelling that was right for me.

Fauquier, to my delight, has set aside some of its land for "easements," where no "development" is allowed to take place. They want to preserve its rural atmosphere. This is a countryside dominated by the very rich, so as long as their money and their taste for "country" living (drinking chilled Virginia white wine on their deck) has influence, the land will continue to look beautiful. If I were rich, I'd have a house here too.

As with all pastoral art, the landscape is "manufactured." Photography is no exception. The power to shape the image is the user behind the lens. The meadow and the trees may be real, but they are placed by artifice, as much as any office building or parking lot. They just are a lot more pleasing to a serenity-seeking city person like me. I love summer so much that I want to keep it with me all year: misty hills, green meadows, forest edges, chirping birds, the rumble of distant thunder. I managed to capture this image from a moment's snapshot. It looks ever so calm, even furnished with the appropriate herd of cattle, but traffic was whizzing by me at high speeds while I took the picture at the roadside. That's all right … all I need is the image, the memory, and a sip of white Virginia wine.

Posted at 3:38 am | link