PHOTOGRAPHY: Southern Cities #1
Knoxville 2018 | Nashville 2020
Amy’s job has been taking her to some southern cities in the last few years. Whenever possible we’ve tried to make a mini vacation out of the work trip.
Substack is somewhat limited in its photo placement. But, I’ve been making books of our recent trips on Shutterfly. Looking at a preview of one of them and it dawned on my that screenshots of the pages would be a nice way to present photos in a collage fashion.
Here are those pages with some notes for context.
The trip to Knoxville was a first for both of us. It’s a nice city with a small, contained entertainment district called Market Square. Nothing compared to Nashville which is both good and bad. The meal on the top left was shrimp with a fried grit cake. I replicated it when we got home and it’s been in the menu repertoire ever since.
Since we were so close we took a drive to an underwater lake not far from the Smokey Mountains. Spent a few hours in Gatlinburg which is kind of the souther Niagara Falls — beyond a tourist trap but okay for a brief diversions.
The University of Tennessee is in Knoxville. We were there for a Saturday football game and got to experience how they tailgate on boats along the river. I could get into that. Knoxville is also calling itself “Scruffy City” which I love.
Fast forward two years. Amy has to visit a plant just outside Nashville. My dad and I have a business called Blue Water Barnwood. Shipping was the biggest pain of the business and we had something to get southern Illinois. We decided to drive a hall bench down and make it part of the work trip. We stayed at Hidden Winery that night before heading to Nashville the next day.
I hadn’t been to Nashville since my parents took me as a kid when we lived in Kentucky. I booked us in the same Hyatt we had stayed in back then. Amy was working so I explored by myself during the day.
I really like my “Nashville Neon” collection. Did a photo collage that’s in my bathroom which itself is dedicated to New Orleans and the South in general.
Heading home we had to hit Third Man Records. We drove through the Land Between the Lakes area where I lived as a kid. Saw my tiny town of Benton and ate a a lodge I used to go to as a kid.
