Method: Concept Planning, The Site Survey, and One's Camera.

​I had scheduled a stop this afternoon at a clients house in Eggertsville. We had done an initial clean up project there late in the summer and now that the site is stabilized we are moving forward planning the finish site plan and landscape design. My visit today was for survey work so I could get the correct site information on paper.

​I had Jeremy and a 100' tape measure with me but as I took my first pictures I decided I had enough hard measure in the official survey. Everything else - note: we're only doing concept development - I could estimate and sketch its locations based on site photographs.

​But as I began taking images, I could see in the frame of the camera the visual issues that needed to be addressed. Viewpoints to prioritize became apparent. Clutter that needed to be dealt with was in view. The scale of objects on the site, otherwise taken for granted as "existing," became problematic.

​The point here, the methodological discovery so-to-speak, is that using the camera to survey the site created a different frame to see the site in. It defamiliarized it in a way. And I think, as process, "Before" images need to be seen not as documentary, but as part of the design itself.