3. Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, the Jefferson family home, on April 13, 1743, and he was the eldest boy among eight surviving children. The home was located near the Southwest Mountains and the Rivanna River in Albemarle County, Virginia. He lived at Shadwell for only a couple of years before his family moved to Tuckahoe, a Randolph family plantation where Jefferson resided for six or seven years with his immediate family and extended members of his mother’s family. At both plantations, Jefferson enjoyed a similar lifestyle associated with a prosperous, well-connected, and social family in colonial Virginia. He enjoyed music with his older sister, and he would learn to ride and to dance as part of standard genteel life. As a boy, Jefferson explored the woods, fields, and river, and he developed a lifelong affinity for nature.    

-Andrew B. Leiter

I arrived at the Jefferson birthplace to find a historic marker next to a bleak gravel pull-off area from a small county road in Virginia. It was late afternoon and the sky was nicely textured with clouds as the glow of the setting sun intensified the light, but the road was down in a bit of a valley which was already in shadow by the time I started shooting. I made a few terrible images of the sign, some tracks in the gravel, and an old fence. Needing a better vantage point to capitalize on the sky, I crossed the road, busy with rush-hour traffic at this point, and walked up to a parking lot some 30 or 40 yards up from the marker. I turned around to find a spectacular sight - the hilltop of the old Jefferson plantation, long since burned to the ground, was silhouetted against the brilliantly lit sky. I quickly focused on a large oak tree and bits of fencing to shoot a few frames. I stopped to survey the scene for more images and saw a flock of birds headed right for the tree I had just photographed. I talked them into my frame as a bowler might coax the ball to curve in for a strike. I set my shutter speed and exposure. After teasing me for awhile, they zoomed in towards my shot in perfect formation and I knew I had it without looking at the preview. It still ranks as one of my favorite images from the more than 18,000 frames I shot for the project. 

--Matthew Albritton

Matthew Albritton