As Henry Ford once said:
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
So we are in Spain with all our gear, sitting by the pool after having shot what we came here for – and I’m thinking: “this is not a job, this is an opportunity” – so we asked David, the local real estate agent who was keen to promote the area to the UK market, if he had anything else on his books for us to look at while we were here.
Well, he naturally jumped at the opportunity and so took us out to see this property…
.. which was a restored Spanish Finca (farmhouse) set amidst vineyards and almond groves near Javea (or Xabia as known in València) in this beautiful part of the Costa Blanca.
The property was built around 300 years ago for a farmer, his family, and animals – all sharing the same building. In fact, the courtyard would have been a corral with the animals feeding from a trough which is now part of the wall beneath the kitchen window.
Yes, I can work with that…
.. but what’s it like inside…
.. or should I say, what could it look like…
.. as the recce images…
.. are just our starting point…
.. to give us an idea of whether it’s worth spending more time on…
.. doing whatever we feel needs to be done…
.. to not just take some pictures…
.. but to create images…
.. that others would want to use.
THE STORY
The couple had dreamed of owning a place like this since their student days but were almost put off by the prices of renovated fincas – until they decided to undertake the work themselves and create the archetypical holiday home we all dream of – exposed stonework, beamed ceilings, terracotta floors and ochre colour-washed walls.
Mind you, they had to learn that Spanish and UK deadlines aren’t always the same!
Anyway, Marie had clearly a lot to do here…
.. while I just had to figure out how to light this place…
.. with just one main light…
.. as the power supply was, to say the least…
.. minimum.
Still, the natural light was very good, as our recee images showed…
.. so it was just a case of making the most of that…
.. to create what was to become one of the most fantastic periods of my life.
So I’d just like to thank David and also his wife Christine here…
.. for not only their time but also for this Opportunity – as that’s how I started to view at this type of work and almost every other assignment from this point in time onwards.
Featured in the October 2005 issue of BBC Good Homes magazine…
.. on pages 24 to 28, plus in the 4th issue of Templeton Robinson’s Property Life magazine…
.. on pages 12 to 17 – as well as in many other magazines around the World too (which unfortunately I’m unable to show here because I wasn’t able to pick-up a copy of those magazines here in Ireland).
From Marie & me @ ampimage – who simply tried to create the dream of ‘living the dream’ in this beautiful part of the World that they call Costa Blanca… just for you 🙂