Photos from Wyoming

Almost home... by around this time tomorrow I'll be rolling into Portland. wOOt.

I'm in Boise, ID right now. Another great, great town that has managed to retain its traditions and history- painstakingly built brick/marble facades built by previous generations, a grand capitol building, tall trees lining brick sidewalks, lots of preserved architecture- while still folding these elements into a new, forward-thinking city. A guy with a "pray, vote, pray" t-shirt has walked by with a boombox spewing Bon Jovi just walked by for the third time. And I just saw a 20-something, completely sleeved and pierced blonde girl walk past a 60-something rancher wearing a cowboy boots and hat, and they both kind of looked at each other with mutual respect.

Dead bugs on the windshield. My car is not very aerodynamic. And this is after I cleaned it an hour prior. No joke.

Just West of Idaho Falls. The world drops off into a surreal, moonlike atmosphere of wheat and these crater-hills.

The middle of Wyoming, on the way to Lander.

The beautiful, beautiful Teton Mountain Range.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Everyone who wants to drill for oil should come visit this National Park, one of the most beautiful natural environments in the United States in my opinion. Jaw dropping beauty. Like, stop the car every 5 minutes because the views are so mind-blowing beauty.

Since my last post in Kansas, I drove to Colorado Springs for the day to see a one of my most favoritest people in the whole world, Lizzy Bruns, who is working for the Obama campaign. Little did I know Colorado Springs is one of the most conservative areas in Colorado. I did some phone volunteering, making sure people were registered to vote, asking who they intended to vote for, and educating people on the issues and candidates if they wanted.

Its unbelievable how some people will blindly vote along party lines, completely uneducated about the issues and where Obama and McCain stand on them. I talked to people slipping out of middle class, working 2 jobs at 10-16 hours a day yet barely making ends meet, who are voting for McCain because they want his tax cuts, which won't even touch them, while Obama's will. Others told me they were voting McCain because they were worried about the effects of the economy on their life, which I won't even get into. The best was the woman who said she was voting McCain because "Obama hates America".

Gahhhhh... I'll leave you with some pretty photos of Rocky Mountain National Park, and Trail Ridge Road, which leads through the park. It's the highest paved road in North America. Go there sometime. I also threw in some photos from my drive North out of the park, near Arapahoe Nat'l Forest and Southern Wyoming.

Also, can we get some comments going, because it feels like I'm talking to just myself, which I'm doing enough of on this road trip already. Just say "hi".

Trail Ridge Road, as seen from an overlook

Wyoming

Wyoming

A scene I caught at an overlook. I could do a whole project on my covert efforts to take photos of tourists.

Yeah

Right?

Cool shirt

A section of Trail Ridge Rd cutting through the side of the Rockies.

Nikon..... DUAL!

My sweet ride, liking it more every day.

Pictures of people taking pictures

Goodland, KS

Finally got into a destination before the sun set. Barely. As soon as I got to the campsite, I parked my car, hopped on my bike, and took off for town a half mile away. Sure was nice to actually have time to ride around, check things out, shoot some photos. I didn't really feel like approaching people for portraits (driving in solitary for 6-7 hours a day will do that), so I just stuck with landscapes.

I've never been to Goodland, Kansas before, but it felt like every other small town I've been to in the Midwest. I mean that as a compliment. It felt familiar, storied, reliable. Ice cream parlor, insurance guy, auto repair, local bar, J.C. Penny catalog store, etc. Walking down main street in these towns is like eating a hotdog at a ballgame. Love it, could make a project out of it. As usual, like nearly every small town in America, Goodland's main street definitely seemed to be struggling. Some boarded windows, some for rent signs.

Even through the slow, seeming disintegration of the American town- it's buildings, its businesses, livelihoods even- some parts, like the Clawson Electric Company sign below, age nicely. A reminder of the American Force of the past.

Auto Parts store- Goodland, KS

I've got a total love affair with grain silos.

One of Goodland's claims to fame- a giant Van Gogh reproduction, as large as a water tower.

Goodland Elementary School

I'll warn you...

... that this post is a complete hodgepodge of pictures and events. Kind of like a quilt!

I'm here:


I am currently writing to you from inside a tent at a KOA 'kampground' on a grasshopper-filled, mosquito-y, interstate and airport adjacent field in Lawrence, Kansas. Ohhh, the joys of the internet can never escape me, even when I'm camping.

Anyway... I've been on the road since last Thursday. An eternity. I'm such a pro. I've got it all figured out. My car is packed like the three bottom tiers of a Jenga tower, everything fits perfectly in it's little space, and meal prep has been worked down to a 10-minute start-to-finish science. Sandwiches are my favorite.

Here's my campsite in Lawrence:


My car, all packed up (p.s., don't be an Element hater. It looks so odd, but its utility has been growing on me every day):


By the way, totally didn't live up to my goal of posting every other day. My bad. The lesson there: you never know how road trips are going to pan out. It's been actually kind of hectic, without the kind of down time I expected to have. I'll even admit that I took a day off in St. Louis to hang out with friends, and decided to not touch my car or computer for the day, which worked out quite nicely.

Here's a quick and dirty recap:

Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia: I drove out of Maryland, my home sweet former home on Thursday. Had a very melancholy drive out of town and out of the state. Lots of, "This is the last time I'm ever going to see 'X' for a long time" thoughts. I keep my music on shuffle, and kept skipping through all the songs that weren't slow and kind of sad. Alot of Radiohead was played. What an exit.

The destination for the first night was Huntington, WV, which was about 400 miles West. I'm trying to do most of this trip on backroads, like US and State highways, because riding across the country had taught me that all the cool and beautiful stuff going on in America is on these roads. Not the interstate. Sticking to this M.O., I drove through the majestic, tree-covered, and misty hills of West Virginia most of the day. Definitely something magical about the untouched areas of Appalachia. Kind of a stillness and a sweet smell in the air. West Virginia is an amazing state, even though I saw maybe 5-6 confederate flags flying off of barns and houses. I feel like I could spend months exploring here, and I'd love it.

This was my lunch spot the first day on the road:


And a helicopter I saw:


Then I drove through Kentucky and Ohio, then Indiana, then Illinois, then Missouri, and now I'm in Kansas. Most of the drive has looked like this:


Trip highlights:

- Indianapolis, Indiana: I met up with two friends that I biked across the country with, Joe and Marita. Marita's sister is a country/pop/folk singer named Coles Whalen, and she was playing a sweet outdoor venue called the Rathskeller, which is this amazing outdoor beer garden with 50-some picnic tables.

It was great to have actual human company for the first time in... 2 days. I thought I was an introvert, but maybe not. The three of us, along with Coles and her bassist, Kim, had an amazing time on a beautiful night, and also were served 4 bottles of nice Pinot Grigio and dinner on the house, because we were 'with the band'. Nice.

The venue (I guess iphones don't do well in the dark):


- St. Louis, Missouri: The three of us then drove on through Illinois to arch-tastic St. Louis. On our blessed day off there, coffee shops were perused, NYtimes magazines were read, and we also went to check out the St. Louis Museum of Art, appropriately acronymed SLAM. Take that, Met. The museum was a really pleasant surprise.

I especially liked their collection of impressionism paintings, and this sick video installation called "Placebo" by Dutch-born artist Saskia Olde-Wolbers. These links were the best thing I could find, but please check them out, it was an amazing video- a story of a wife whose relationship to her husband had been haltingly broken by the falsification of his life. When he finds out what she knows, he attempts to kill them both by driving into a tree. The video takes place in the ICU of a hospital, with the narration coming from her coma-induced mind. The visual looks like this:

Courtesy of the Hammer Museum and Saskia Olde-Wolbers

The first line of the video is, "Here I am, lying next to my lover Jean, in intensive care, slipping in and out of consciousness in shifts. Life slowly dripping out of us...". Kind of a conceptual dyptich that stunningly illustrates how audio and visual can pair together in the most amazing and profound fashion. I'm still moved by it.

St. Louis has also got this park in the middle of the city called 'Forest Park'; its the city's Central Park. After going to SLAM, which is located in the heart of the park, Joe, Marita, and I went to loung on the grass for a while before dinner. Here they are:


The park, SLAM in the distance:


SLAM:


Gotta love Chuck Close:

OK, I think that's it for now. Thanks for getting this far. Off to Goodland, Kansas.

Out to Portland/New News

Sooooooo after the bike trip ended, this blog took a backseat for a while, and I bet my readership trickled down to 10 or so. I was putting my attention elsewhere, primarily scanning about 50-70 GB worth of film, retouching it, getting the new website/pdf up, sending out a handful of promos with a $0 budget (probably going to give in to getting Workbook email contacts), and also arranging my life in Portland, dealing with renters/car insurance, packing up my life, etc etc. In two weeks.

While I was doing all that...

- Transworld Snowboarding published the Vermont Resort Guide I'd shot and written last winter (1st issue, should still be out on stands, maybe).
- Really, really stoked on the Frequency Snowboard Journal thats about to hit stands. It's their annual, collectors edition Photobook, which features 5 photog's portfolios from the past winter, and I'm one of the five. It'll be on stands in 2 weeks or so, and it's a beautiful, beautiful magazine. Even if you don't snowboard, check it out.

I'm currently wrapping up packing my clothes, cameras, and life for my move out to Portland. Actually as I write this, I've got every single bag I own, fully packed with clothes and equipment, laying all around me in circular heap, ready for a new home in Portland.

The drive out there will take two weeks, and I'm shooting another story, one that looks into the entire subculture of America lives their lives on the interstates and backroads of the U.S. It's gonna involve alot of camping, approaching everyone from Tennessee truckers to sun-chasing RV’ers to even bicyclists riding across the country like myself. I'm excited to get on the road, shoot this story, and get it in a magazine.

I'll aim to get updates from the road every other day.

New website is UP.

After kind of a slog, I got the new site up. Totally updated to include all of this summer's photos.

4x5s

35mms thus far

Terribly sorry for the giant gap in posting. Nothing much is going on, just endless hours in front of photoshop doing retouching, and doing the occasional errand on my bike. These are the 35mm shots I've retouched so far, and I've got a bit more to do.

Not sure how to present these and the 4x5s together as a cohesive project, they seem to be at polar ends of many spectrums. 35mm's are gritty, spur of the moment shots, messed up colors. 4x5s are pretty much the opposite- fine grain, set up moments, spot on colors (I'm trying at least). I'll find a way to put em together, but I'd love any comments or suggestions.