Farm Stories
Farm Stories is a collection of photographs that documents small-scale farmers and vendors in Michigan. My process led me to investigate a range of farmers: an organic small-scale vegetable farm, a fishery, an apple orchard, and a livestock farm. My personal motivations and research led me to further investigate the animals within the food industry. To portray this, I created a collection of photographs that show a side of the food industry that people rarely get to see or think about: the animals.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR and Drone
2019-2020
This series of photographs is a combination of aerial views, detailed imagery, and documentary style portraits of farms in Michigan.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR and drone
October 2019
To visually communicate the quantity of apples that a single orchard produces, I created contrasting environmental portraits, and aerial photographs of this small farm in Leelanau County, Michigan.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR and Drone
October 2019
My process involved communicating with a lot of different farmers all over Michigan. These photographs are from Lakeview Hill Farm in Traverse City, Michigan, which is a certified organic produce farm that specializes in hoophouse production. The farm was established in 2017, and is completely solar powered.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
October-January 2019-2020
Carlson’s Fishery is a 5th generation family owned fishery, specializing in whitefish. They operate seasonally in Fishtown, Leland.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
April 2020
Being the world’s most common bird, we often forget that chickens are intelligent creatures. They have the ability to count, have self-awareness, and are even sensitive for their peers (The BBC). This notion might raise ethical issues with the farming industry, which is why I choose to capture chickens in traditional portrait poses.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
April 2020
A challenging part of this project was working to capture animals in their natural rhythm, without compromising on my aesthetic goals. This series of photographs was created in a small, confined space, with no control on the lighting.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
April 2020
These twin lambs were the smallest ones of the litter, and were being bottle fed inside of their owner’s house. They were bouncing in their space, and so full of energy, but through trial and error, I was able to create these minimalistic portraits of them.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
April 2020
These portraits of Whitney were created at the Barn Sanctuary in Chelsea, a place that provides a safe haven for neglected and abused farm animals.
Sarah Schade
Digital: DSLR
April 2020
This portrait portrays Portia, a goat that was rescued by Barn Sanctuary in Chelsea. When they found her, she was only a few hours old, and was abandoned with her brother. Now a couple of years old, she loved interacting with my camera.