A Meadows of Dan man is documenting the construction and changes in the mountain created by the project to widen U.S. 58 in the area of Lovers Leap.
Kevin Hubbard, of Hubbard 1 Productions, said he’s heard the project talked about for his entire life.
Discussions were that “it was going to happen, and it was a couple years down the road,” he said. But with no action for many years, “I kind of got jaded about it. Even when they came in and started unloading equipment I was like ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’”
Hubbard said Mary, his wife, was excited once the project began and suggested he started documenting the changes.
“She was like ‘oh, look at all the stuff that’s going on. You really need to video this,’” he said.
Before the construction started, Hubbard worked with David Stanley to take videos of the area during the winter. As the two worked, “we were talking about how we needed to document things,” he said.
In July, Hubbard said he was driving through the area with his equipment and decided to stop at Kreager Woodworking, Inc. and shoot a quick video of the area using his drone.
“I posted it on YouTube, and a couple of people that subscribe to my channel shared it on Facebook and it just blew up,” he said.
Since the area is changing drastically all the time, Hubbard decided to begin taking regular videos of the area.
“Now it’s something I plan out. It takes me a pretty good while to get them shot and edited to make them look good, because I always want to outdo the ones I did before,” he said.
Hubbard estimates it typically takes most of one day to film the video and quite a while to edit it and make the final video.
“The editing process is like building a puzzle, but you haven’t seen the picture of what it’s going to be yet,” he said.
In his videos, Hubbard said he tries to cover the area from different angles. While some people may want to see the same areas each time to fully see the changes, Hubbard said he prefers filming from different points of view.
“There’s a lot to be seen right there,” he said.
In his videos, Hubbard has focused on areas near the Fred Clifton Park, Kreager Woodworking, Inc., the DeHart Botanical Gardens, and others in the construction zone.
He currently plans to create one video each month. If construction stops during the winter, he said he’ll probably shoot several videos on the different conditions in the area.
Hubbard said most of the people who’ve seen his videos want to drive through the area to see it and the construction firsthand.
“Most of the people are like ‘oh we need to go see that,’ and ‘because of your video we went on the mountain to see what was going on.’ I get a lot of messages about that. It seems to have the effect of bringing more people to the area,” he said.
Hubbard is glad his videos are having an impact, especially as many are sad about the destruction of the mountain.
“If you’ll look in my videos, off in the distance there’s a whole lot of wilderness, and a whole lot of untamed area around us that we need to be thankful for. I hope that my videos make everyone thankful for where we live,” he said.
Hubbard also is looking for local musicians to allow him to play their music in his video.
“Some people don’t like my choice of music, so I thought I’d give other people a chance to DJ it a little bit, and see what they come up with,” he said.
Those interested can contact Hubbard via Facebook or by text at (540) 392-9942.
To view his videos, visit Facebook.com/Hubbard1Productions, or YouTube.com/Hubbard1Productions.