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A dwelling set to the harmony of nature

A dwelling set to the harmony of nature

By Times Staff Writer
Published March 21, 2006

LAND O'LAKES - What does a Florida nature photographer want from a house?

Easy.

A view of moss-draped cypress trees, plenty of room for colorful plants that attract hummingbirds and butterflies and an interior space so well-composed that it almost seems to focus on this earthly paradise.

Photographer Jason Hahn, 33, and his wife Nicole, 31, found just that when they built their home in Pasco County four years ago.

The couple, who had just moved to Florida from the Norfolk, Va., area knew they wanted to live in a place where the outdoors transitioned seamlessly with the indoors.

A windows-open-to-the-trees kind of life.

A place where they could raise their son, Adam, now 41/2, not in rural isolation, but in a real community where "there was both a neighborhood with other children and a sense of nature," Jason explains.

So after renting in Palm Harbor near Nicole's parents for a year, the couple decided to build a house in the manicured Oakstead community. The 1/3-acre lot caught their eye because of its unintentional backyard view of a wetland and cypress dome (a dipped swatch of land where the trees grow in a rounded formation) and the illusion that there was nothing but country as far as the eye could see. (In reality they are flanked on each side by the trim, creamy colored houses that populate their section of the development nestled off State Road 54 not far from the Suncoast Parkway.)

"A big part of why we came to Pasco is what you're looking at right now," Jason explained one cool morning in March, as he looked out from his screened porch at the painterly view visible through much of the house. "You just don't see this kind of lot (in an affordable price range) in Hillsborough or Pinellas counties."

The couple scoured the Tampa Bay area for affordable real estate before deciding on Pasco for its lower housing prices, good schools, exponential growth potential and natural settings, even in planned communities.

The four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,200-square-foot Suarez home offered them the kind of space they need in a shared life of work, creativity and child-rearing. Nicole works full time for the American Cancer Society in Pasco County and serves as Jason's business manager; Jason works from home in a part-time job designing and developing online training for security personnel at Navy commissaries; the rest of his work time he devotes to his passion as a wildlife photographer, an avocation for which he's gaining reputation and recognition.

Certified as a Florida master naturalist - "it helps me as a photographer to look at a habitat and know what's going on" - Jason's photographic pilgrimages take him from the Everglades to Fort De Soto Park to Cedar Key to a nearby yard where he spent hours cultivating the trust of a family of sandhill cranes. In another photograph, taken from a small dock in the Everglades, he's surrounded by nearly 40 alligators.

"He's happy if he's knee deep in a swamp," Nicole jokes. "And he's gone through a couple of cell phones, losing them there."

His work has been widely published in books and magazines, including Florida Wildlife magazine, where one of his photos made the January 2006 cover. His photographs are also featured in a special magazine insert produced by the Florida Wildlife Commission, as well as on the cover of a new book about digital photography. His work as well as information about his workshops can be viewed at www.jasonhahn.com His work is also on permanent display at the Alexandria Art Gallery at State Road 54 and Collier Parkway.

The couple converted one of the bedrooms into an office and work space for Jason, a room brimming with the relics of a nature photographer: field guides, shells, antlers (all found while out working) a globe and old cameras, including a turn-of-the-last-century box camera, a twin-lens reflex and a German-made 35mm that once belonged to his stepfather.

The rest of the house is decorated with a nod toward the American mission style, with a color scheme in mossy greens in the main living area.

"All very natural," says Nicole.

The couple exhibits their collection of antiques and pottery along built-in shelves in the airy, high-ceilinged living room. Jason's framed photographs are displayed throughout the house, propped against the study walls, hanging in the dining room. His penchant for landscape photos that capture the lonely wildness of the Florida sky (a pair of kayakers at Fort De Soto takes the breath away) are reminiscent of a young Clyde Butcher, his hero.

Jason grew up on a 50-acre farm in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. He loved nature from an early age, a taste he developed during a boyhood of hiking and playing in the woods with his brother. He holds a college degree in criminal justice, but his work life, which included stints at a zoo, state park and as a restaurant cook, shaped his passions, including his love for cooking. He grows hearty rosemary among the butterfly plants, cultivates a flowering garden in the front of the house that includes firecracker fern, Siberian iris, Mexican petunias and purple salvia. The whole yard, he says, is a haven for all sorts of birds from redheaded woodpeckers to cardinals to blue jays, doves and bluebirds. It's a view he can take in from the open kitchen where he serves as head chef, whipping up enchiladas, Irish lamb stew and lasagna nightly "I don't believe in frozen dinners," he said.

As in the rest of the house, the couple were able to customize details in the kitchen, from the marbled-looking green Formica countertop to the maple cabinets to the bisque appliances to the hardware.

"As soon as we saw this floor plan we knew," Nicole says of their decision to build their home. "Plus we liked being able to pick things out that we wanted, even the window treatments."

And that impressionist painter's view, well, it makes them insanely happy.

Even better, they note, is that they can see in the distance the bright red roof of the new Oakstead Elementary School, where Adam will enter the very first kindergarten class in the fall.

The influence of their backyard landscape and Jason's photography has captured the little boy's imagination, Nicole explains.

"Adam loves all nature stuff," she says. "He comes home from pre-school and wants to see his dad's photographs. Then he draws the life cycle of a butterfly."

--Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com

[Last modified March 21, 2006, 02:30:40]