Jennifer DiDio Photography got a new home last Thanksgiving, as did the DiDio family and CWD Consulting (my husband’s engineering consulting firm). We have been hard at work to get the grounds set up for the portraits you see sampled in this blog. It’s been a delight to see how the studio grounds have developed over the last 8 months as they have certainly undergone quite a transformation. I wanted to share that transformation with fans of Jennifer DiDio Photography so you could see how the spring and summer developed. The earlier studio update I published over the winter months can be found here.
My husband got a vision for how to best utilize the 3.5 acres for our personal and professional needs and has been tirelessly at work to bring that vision to reality. We’ve cut in paths, tilled to plant wild flowers and created nooks with vintage elements from the farm that used to be here. Below you’ll see the wild flowers in action. There’s also the mound we created which has officially been dubbed “Lovers Lookout” for couples and “the Kissing Hill” for families. This will give me a high vantage point I love to feature is some of my portraits. Billy Miller hooked us up with some crown vetch ground cover seeds for the mound, which we are eagerly awaiting the flowers to cover. There are actually steps cut into the dirt on the backside of the mound to make scaling it easier–thank you to our contractors Shorty and Duane! We have a small orchard of various apple trees and while they are untreated and not ‘pretty’ in the grocery store sense, I have a feeling they will be delicious. Clients in the fall–come with a basket to pick apples before you leave. We will have plenty to share.
Now the shack…I have learned this was Mr. Beaty’s (the gentlemen who used to own the land) blacksmith shed. Makes me wonder about all he created in there over the years he farmed this land. I fell in love with the rustic appeal of it for my portraits, as did my clients. It had to be moved for the construction of a barn because of permit requirements though. Moving a shack like this…not an easy job–we tried! When we weren’t successful we moved to plan B and dismantled the walls, and our contractor, Shorty humored me and tried his best to lift the frame of the shack to transplant it. He tried…however, the frame was not sturdy enough to withstand it. So the frame was crushed BUT the shack will be rebuilt from the walls we saved, to another location on the lot.
Look for the shack to reappear in future shoots…the walls are still in tact and the posts are in the ground for rebuilding! Lovers of flowers, thought you might enjoy a close up peek at the wild flowers and berries in our meadow…enjoy! We will replant these wildflowers next spring and as a side note for interested sessions, these sessions are best scheduled for evening sunset shoots. 😉
Lastly, remember to bring your basket for picking apples if you like if you are here in the fall! 😉
