Field of Vision - Quintessential Barrington Magazine

The call was from his father, who was ill and
asked him to come home to help with the farm.
William McGinley died the following month.
As McGinley assumed management duties, he
and his two siblings began to realize they would
not be able to operate the massive farm as their
parents had. They worried that if they sold the
farm, developers would carve it up into 5-acre
parcels and build as many as 80 homes. “When
Dad passed away, there were a lot of calls from
developers,” McGinley says, adding that those
calls upset his mother.
The family looked into strategies that would
guarantee Horizon Farms would remain open
land and that its wildlife and wetlands would be
protected. While doing this research, McGinley
learned of conservation easements. A conservation
easement allows a landowner to designate
how the property will be used no matter who
holds the deed in the future. Once the conservation
easement is drawn up, the landowner enters
into a legal agreement with a qualified, nonprofit
conservation organization, usually a land trust, or
a public agency that will monitor the land and enforce
the guidelines.
McGinley stresses that the landowner decides
the rules of a conservation easement, not the trust
that will administer those rules. “You are designing
the future for your heirs, the people coming
behind you,” he says. “You’re committing yourself
to land preservation in perpetuity.”
When Jane McGinley died in February 2003,
her children stepped up their efforts to create a
conservation easement that would maintain Horizon
Farms as an open space. The agreement was
completed in the fall of that year, with the easement
jointly controlled by the Naperville-based Conservation
Foundation and the Barrington Area Conservation
Trust, which was founded in 2001.
Karen Yancey, executive director of the Barrington
Area Conservation Trust, says McGinley’s
faith in the fledgling organization helped it
to grow. “Robert is one of our favorite people,” she
says, “because he had the courage and tenacity to
see through the creation of an easement of that
size.” At more than 400 acres, the Horizon Farms
property is one of the largest, possibly the largest,
conservation easements in the state.
The McGinley family sold Horizon Farms at
auction in October 2006. The current owners have
maintained the property as a horse farm, which
was McGinley’s hope. He bought a 14-acre slice
of the farm, also part of the easement, to maintain
his family’s tie to the land.
McGinley now divides his time between Barrington
Hills and his home in Santa Monica,
where he is active in efforts to preserve the local
coastline. Although he says he has been shooting
landscapes “all my life,” he did not begin to photograph
Horizon Farms until he returned home
in 2001.
“It soon became an obsession,” he says. “It appealed
to my sense of connection to the land, to
nature.” Because McGinley returns to the Barrington
area once a month, he sees a new perspective
of the farm with every visit. “I was always
getting a fresh look at different weather and light
patterns,” he says. “I was fascinated by the way the
same location would change.”
One morning this summer,
photographers everywhere
grabbed their cameras
when these unusual cloud
formations arrived.
Robert McGinley noticed similar
images to his, found online
later that day from other parts
of the country.
As he continued to photograph the farm, his
connection to it deepened. He saw the landscape as
a natural work of art. “I found the experience of being
able to witness and photograph the farm a very
peaceful experience, and some ways spiritual, too.”
McGinley used his photography to build the
case for the conservation easement. “The first
step was being able to show trustees and attorneys
the importance of the land,” he says, “that
the land has aesthetic value that goes beyond just
development value.”
“Documentary-style” photographs helped to
prove that the property could support and preserve
wildlife and that it contained “view corridors”
that the public could see from the road
– two criteria needed for the IRS to approve the
easement. McGinley also included artistic photos
in the IRS submission. “It was hopefully able to
show the inspiration I get from the experience of
being on the farm.”
McGinley hopes that all viewers, not just IRS
agents, get a sense of that inspiration from his
art. “Being able to have a moment of tranquility
is something I hope the photographs can convey,”
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