Old Houses

I love photographing old houses. The boys and I are in Ocean City this weekend (they are spending the night at Jack's for his birthday) and I finally got a chance to stop and take pictures of an old house that had caught my eye all summer.

Old house have great texture and natural beauty. I got some great shots today and have been having fun editing them.

I almost did not take them because I was worried that someone might say something about me being on the property (which was right off Route 50). And believe it or not, someone did stop and ask me what I was doing! Turns out that she was the great-granddaughter of the man who built the house and happened to be driving by. She was wondering what I was doing, but was OK with me taking the pictures once I told her they were for my own personal use and I was not planning on selling them.

Her uncle was the last family member to live there and it had fallen into disrepair when his family moved out. While the property is still in their family, if they ever decided to fix it up, they would have a lot of county regulations to deal with about the land (a lot of development has since gone up around it) and it is just too expensive. She was really nice and we talked a bit about how so many of these old houses and farms are disappearing (this house is just down the road from the Walmart). One of the reasons that I really wanted to take a picture of it was because another old farm on Rt. 50 had just been knocked down this summer to make room for commercial or restaurant space. I had taken some great pictures of it a couple of years ago and had hoped to go back with my good camera and get more. Sigh.

She asked if I would be willing to send her copies of the pictures which I gladly told her that I would. So it actually turned out to be a good thing to be caught…so neat to learn a little bit about the history of the house.