Visiting a new site for a design or public art project is one of my favorite things about being a landscape architect/public artist. The site visit tells me things that I couldn't otherwise discern from a map, a photo, or an aerial view.

At the site visit, I take measurements and map out my notes on a scaled sketch of the site. These notes form the foundation of the first design concepts so it's helpful to have them already drawn to scale. I also shoot spot grades to determine some basic elevations and contours and to accurately determine existing slopes. To do this, I use a self-leveling LASER combined with a surveyor's rod and a sensor.

A recent residential estate project took me into a particularly swampy site with slow moving water and heavy silty-clay soil. It sure is fun mucking around in the landscape and I'm lucky to experience many different types of sites: urban, rural, remote, crowded, dry, swampy, windswept, shaded, sunny, and everything in between. Included here is an assortment of site visit photos to show the variety of different sites where I work. These photos include sites for private residences, public art, corporate courtyards, and nature park projects.