Home Ground #38
Bozeman, Montana
2026
I’ve photographed this outbuilding before but not in the context of this series of images I don’t think. Plus I liked the lighting in this shot, making it worthy of a repeat.
This is the first outbuilding we built after we’d started building our house in the mountains. It was built primarily of used lumber acquired at a farm auction. The window and door came from the old Anaconda copper mine in Anaconda, Montana. The building serves primarily as a tool shed for gardening etc. Since I’ve always liked photographing old buildings, I built this one to look old from the beginning and let it weather from there.
It seems a bit of a tradition in Montana, and elsewhere I assume, to throw found skulls and other bones on the roofs of sheds or barns or even houses. So I started doing that here many years ago. I haven’t added anything in recent years though. There used to be a lot more on the roof of this shed but between high winds, critters, and general ageing and deterioration of the bone material itself, there is not much left.
I like the crispness of this photo.
Yes, I imagine the crispness is what drew me to photograph a building I’ve seen many, many times over the last 40+ years.
That is a very intriguing little building. It looks surprisingly comfortable and I can easily imagine someone living a simple life in there.
You probably see garden tools inside when you think of it but since I’ve never been inside I can see it as anything my mind creates.
Nice photo too!
I’ve often thought of that outbuilding being a little bunkhouse kind of setup–for one person as the inside is only about 8’x12′. Alternatively we gave a bit of thought at one point in time of dragging it off in the woods and making it into a sauna (not the the beady-eyed kind though). But, inertia kicked in and it’s stayed, and will stay, as a tool shed.