Caves, Lakes, and Corvettes Tourism
Happy Thanksgiving folks. Last year I had a great adventure with the Vid Monster team journeying across South Central Kentucky to advertise what the region has to offer. I love where I live and getting to highlight it in this project was really a dream come true. Nick, Derick, Jared and Sam made the hard work fun and collaborative and I’m so grateful for them.
For a while I had a tourism section on my website, but I’ve found that when people hear Tourism Photography they imagine luxury. This wasn’t that. There’s nothing wrong with a luxury resort, but that’s not why people visit rural Kentucky. So now this blog post will also serve as a secret tourism section for a site that probably has too many sections already.
So we’ll start this large post with photos from my home in Warren County. The way this project worked was the local tourism directors picked our locations and sometimes had models ready for us. For Bowling Green/ Warren County we spent a lot of time downtown where the two fountain photos came from, and the ice cream parlor and White Squirrel Brewery photo there at the bottom left. The only models we had were the mother and son in the bottom right.
Every year since getting laid off I’ve had a moment where I thought I had made it and I wouldn’t have to worry about money all the time. In 2020 it was the Corvette plant shoot, ‘21 was the tornado coverage for WaPo, ‘22 was flooding coverage for NYT, and this tourism project was the biggest one last year. Each time I was wrong, but there hasn’t been a big moment in 2024 yet. It’s been a hard year so if anyone reading this wants to hire me for a big project I’m due for a dose of optimism.
I think this collection of photos does a good job of capturing the vibe of the region. The man playing marbles is 78 years old and says it’s kept him young. I’ve never seen a man that age just squat and get back up like that so he might be on to something. The little girl with her grandfather is going to take over and run that farm one day. The blond woman with her daughter applying ketchup is married to one of the members of the band Black Stone Cherry. The man with the gun is reenacting the duels that took place at the Linkumpinch Dueling Grounds on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. The men in the cave are actually married to each other but weren’t big PDA guys so they just look like buddies. All of these people just volunteered to be photographed when asked by myself of the county tourism director.
Edmonson County decided to invest in two extra days of photography and video, so we really got to make some special work there. I’ll finish off the post with all my favorite Edmonson Co pics. We were really set up for success on this leg of the project. Vanessa Ulm had families ready to model and locations ready to be documented. We started in an Airbnb rental home, then got some ice cream, stopped by the Mammoth Cave entrance sign, went to a campground, an offroading park, kayaked in a river, and went to the horse stables.
I wish I could do this project every year. I love finding new places and highlighting what makes them special. My shooting has also evolved some since this project and I think I have a clearer vision of the photos I want to make before arriving on location. I hope you’ve enjoyed looking, see you next time.
Love, Austin