Hello readers of The Culture Project! This article is going to be different than my previous ones. I am going to talk about an NFT project, but it’s not gen art related. I’ll be covering a photography project I’ve been working on and it’s release on objkt. Photography & exploring have been a passion of mine for a long time now. My wife and me have always loved to look for abandoned places to explore. A lot of the places we look for are out in the country, where nature can really take over. You can really find some amazing things out there if you look for them.
This project is called The Lost Bee House. It’s an abandoned house that I have explored a ton of times over the years. This has been in the works for ten years now, though I didn’t intend it to be a long term project. It originally had a massive beehive on the front porch and a hive some where in the walls of the house. Sadly the bees are no longer there. It’s crazy how much a place can change over ten years and it’s amazing to be able to document the changes in this way.
This is one of the first shots I took of the house. I was using a Canon 20D and a cheap lens back then. I had a decent wide angle lens, but I wasn’t shooting full frame yet. We weren’t planning our trips out for good lighting or best time of day. We just went when we had time and explored. It was more about the experience than it was about the photographs. Now that I have a lot more experience with photography, I take into account a lot more before I go to specific spots. I’m more likely to explore by my self these days or with my daughter.
This was the best shot I was able to get of the hive, taken on a super bright day. It was an amazing thing to come across unexpectedly. You could hear them from a good distance when first walking up, the loud hum of hundreds of bees. I had one other shot of the hive from the other side, I got as close I was comfortable getting. Probably five to seven feet away from it. It was a terrible photo, but a really cool moment in exploring.
The interior of the house was another nice surprise. You never know what you’re going to find in an abandoned house. These kind of places are what you hope to find. It’s dilapidated now and you can’t get inside most of these rooms anymore. It’s funny how you always find things placed in random spots throughout rooms. It tends to happen at the places that aren’t as well hidden. We’ve always followed the motto of the explorer, “take only photographs and leave only footprints”.
The kitchen in this place had to be the coolest part for me. I just love the look of it. One of my favorite shots from this series. I plan on going back soon and trying to get access to this room again. Curious to see what it looks like now.
Here is where we get to see the drastic changes in comparison shots, old to new. The first is a room I was easily able to get to. The floor was holding up in the section I entered.
Shot of the bedroom from ten years ago.
Same room, taken two months ago. I wasn’t expecting the changes to be so drastic. If it wasn’t for the left over pieces of carpet and the beds. It would be hard to tell it was the same room.
The front porch, taken ten years ago.
A room that looks out to the front porch. Floor is weak in a lot of that area, couldn’t get to the same spot. Taken two months ago.
The back door, taken nine years ago.
The back door, close to a year after the first shot, taken eight years ago. They ended up clearing out all of the brush and trees. They also destroyed the porch area that had the bee hive.
This shot is another one of my favorites from the series. Another one I shot eight years ago. Love the moody clouds and the nice light from the sun a few hours before sunset. Another tragedy, I found out they took down the old windmill the last time I visited.
Shot a year later, not much change on this one besides the growth on the walls. House looks sadder for some reason, but that could just be the angle of the shot.
This is the last comparison shot I have for now. It’s the front of the house after everything was cleared away.
The windmill is still there in this shot, but you’ll notice it’s gone in the next one. This one was shot eight years ago.
Here is a shot from a few months ago. The doors are gone and trees are starting to get big again. This is going to be my genesis 1/1 piece for the this project, The Lost Bee House: Genesis. If someone buys it, they will get the older companion piece with it for free. I will mint the older photo after purchase of the first and transfer it to the wallet that holds the original. I will be doing this for all the photos that have an old shot that goes with them.
This is the second piece that will have 5 editions to it, The Lost Bee House: Young Explorer. My daughter has already claimed the first one and wants it in her collection. But she also wants others to have it if they would like to collect one. She said she wanted it to be cheap so anyone could buy it if they wanted.
I’m going to release more of these on objkt from this series on twitter over the next two weeks. If you are interested give me a follow here. And here are a few more from my last trip below. I hope you enjoyed this article as I hope to do some more like this in the future along side my generative art articles.
Going back to this house and looking back through all the old photos has been a lot of fun. I’ve decided to do more of these as an on going project. I’m going to go back to places I visited in the past and reshoot them. It will be fun and interesting to see the changes of each place. I shot a really cool church seven years ago and decided I wanted to go back and check it out next. It had an old cool piano in it still and a bell tower. It was hidden away in a thicket of trees.
When I got there it was just a field with cows. Nothing of trees or a building left, no indication it was ever there. Crazy how things change.
Thanks for reading and please like and share the article if you enjoyed it. We are just trying to spread some Tezos and Generative Art love with The Culture Project. Our community is open to anyone that wants to learn about or share generative art. The communities Twitter, Discord, and my twitter @joshripple. If you like the content please give us a follow.