SLIDESHOW: Morning in Fountain, NC

Fountain Fest, Music Maker’s new music festival in eastern North Carolina, is just around the corner! As we count down the days to October 17, co-founder and Executive Director Tim Duffy invites you to experience Fountain the way he sees it through these extraordinary new photos, taken in late summer 2026.

I have come to love photographing in Fountain, NC, especially on the quiet mornings when there is almost no one around. These photographs were made in mid-morning with an antique lens—old glass with its own imperfections and its own way of describing light.

That is part of what interests me about using older lenses. They do not render the world with the clinical precision of modern optics. They flare, soften, distort, and sometimes make familiar places feel newly discovered. I am not trying to make Fountain look like the past. I am interested in using an older visual language to look more closely at the town as it is now.

Music Maker’s main offices remain in Hillsborough, but Fountain has become our art and creative center. We have a recording studio, a photography studio, and the Freeman Vines Gallery, located in the workshop where Freeman Vines made his remarkable guitars for many years.

Fountain is also becoming a retreat for Music Maker artists and staff, a peaceful place to come work on music, photography, writing, and other creative projects away from the usual noise and interruptions.

For me, it has become something even more personal. After more than forty years of traveling throughout the South to find people and places to photograph, I have discovered the pleasure of returning to one small town again and again. I can walk out the door with a camera, wander the empty streets, watch the light change, and keep finding something new.

That quiet is one of the things I love most about Fountain.

– Tim Duffy

Co-Founder and Executive Director, Music Maker Foundation