I’m going to share some photos today that I thought I would never share. Some photos that I actually shot almost two years ago now, but was too ashamed to post.

 

Why? Because I actually got in trouble when I shot them. Not big trouble, thankfully, but I was still so uncomfortable with the situation that I uploaded these photos to my hard drive and never looked at them again.

 

 

Let me back up and start from the beginning:

 

When I lived in Boston, there was this field that I drove by every day on the way to work. An absolutely beautiful field that in the summer/early fall, would bloom with these huge yellow weed flowers. This field was part of a massively huge piece of property that used to be part of a nursery/garden center. In front of parts of the property, there were still some old greenhouses with big “NO TRESPASSING” & “PRIVATE PROPERTY” signs. I knew not to go over by those greenhouses where it was so clearly marked that the landowners did not want people on their land.

 

 

But this field that I admired during my morning and evening commutes was in another section of the property that wasn’t marked like the green houses were. I figured since this spot wasn’t marked like the greenhouses were and was essentially an overgrown weed patch, it was fine if I wandered in and took pictures there. And it was!

 

Until the owners showed up, started yelling at us with some pretty explicit language, and even threatened to call the police on us.

 

And the reason I never shared these photos is because their reaction was totally understandable (maybe except the explicit language…). We WERE trespassing, which is wrong and is something I would never, ever normally do (especially after this experience).

 

 

Now, some people would just brush this off and say the owners were being grumpy old people and be on with their merry life, but I felt AWFUL about it. I couldn’t even look at these photos afterwards. I’m not sure if this post has some huge moral story to it, but maybe just an anecdote on why I will be very, VERY careful of understanding where property lines are and respecting people’s rights to their own property and privacy.

 

The ONLY reason I am posting these photos now is because in the past six months, they’ve actually started building big high rise apartments on this plot of land and I felt the need to share what a beautiful little spot this field was before it was leveled out and urbanized.

 

So, enjoy some photos that came at the expense of me feeling simultaneously like the worst criminal and idiot, but that also are a sort of memorial to a beautiful place that no longer exists. If that’s not some ironic sense of sentimentality, I don’t know what is.

 

 

Model: Erika Handly

Costume: Grimilde Malatesta