Cottekill Retreat
A beautiful family cabin in the woods, renovated and expanded. Nested in the trees and photographed on a gloriously colorful autumn morning for Miles Paloympis.
Design: Miles Design
Location: Cottekill, New York - Catskill Mountains / Hudson River Valley
03.26.25 Update - I recently felt compelled to update this project, as it remains one of my favorites. It’s my kind of dream scenario - a cozy little home in the forest, nestled in the Catskill Mountains foothills in the Hudson Valley, a place I miss dearly after moving way just a few years ago.
I previously only had a few of the images, the brightest ones, available on view here. But, as I have become more comfortable showing this darker, moodier side of my imagery. I have come to feel confident they will be received well, and that they most accurately represent who I am as an artist and photographer, so the right thing to do is share them without holding back. I used to get very trapped in the thought that “potential clients” / “the market” only want “bright happy images”, and that all the darker, moodier, atmospheric stuff I really loved was just something I had to do for myself, and not something I would ever get hired for. I’ve started to let that go, and if you’ve been keeping up with my work and how I present it lately, and how I changed my website’s aesthetic to meet this moment, you know this is deeply satisfying to me as an artist to be more true to myself.
I believe by doing this, I’ll attract the right people to me, and allow myself to be more fulfilled in the work I am doing, while bringing my own unique vision into the world.
To that end, the last three images in this following set, are FAR brighter than I would like, as if they were shot in the brightest summer day, rather than fitting the soft mood of this home on the cool fall day we shot. I feel somewhat compelled to dust off the negatives and re-process them, but for now I want to leave them as an example of this turning point in my career, when I stopped making my work something I didn’t want it to be, and moved wholeheartedly in embracing the beauty of shadow, atmosphere, mood, and soft light that I so dearly love.
And, I want to give a heartfelt thank you to my client on this shoot, Miles, who at no point insisted that I brighten any of these images, a request that I too-often faced in real estate photography.
