14/08/14 I walk through a parking lot filled with Ford F150 pick-up's and the like. As I walk into the pub crowded with locals and tourists alike, I smell the sawdust and what I think may be the micro-organisms from the brewery. I'm in Wallace, Idaho at the City Limits Pub where they have attached a campsite to the pub/brewery (or vice versa). Freakin' good combination after a long day. Earlier in the evening I had walked through the town that appears to have started during the gold rush and survived on tourism with its train museum, bordello museum and local theatre. There were a few restaurants a wine bar and two other bar-restaurants. They all looked good but the locals seemed to be at the pub and I figure the locals know best. Once I got a seat,my server recommended their Loft Honey, which I tried and for someone who doesn't drink a lot of beer, I think it's pretty good. As I sit here enjoying my burger and beer I ponder my journey over the past few weeks. Not only in the literal sense of traveling through redwood forests, along craggy oceanside cliffs, rain forests bordering beaches and islands surrounded by mountainous vistas. It has also been a journey in the sense that it has taken about three weeks and four states to get into some sort of rhythm, letting myself relax and let go. Can't say I'm there yet, but I'm getting there. I had planned to post at least once a week. Between driving, looking for a campsite, driving, photographing, driving and looking for my sunset and sunrise shoot locations, I was falling into my sleeping bag exhausted. Then waking up a few hours later to breakdown camp, go shoot the sunrise and do it all over again. Somehow I got it into my mind that I needed to shoot every sunset and sunrise. I'm not specifically a landscape photographer, I do a little. I used to do a lot more when I was in school and was still terrified of talking to people. I respect the work that landscape photographers do, love the images, but it isn't what drives me. What gets me are the people and the lives they live. I went to the Hoh Olympic National Rainforest and the entire time there I found myself producing potential photo shoots. I wasn't as interested in photographing the landscape, as much as I was photographing it with people in it. I like photographing life in these magnificent settings... People and animals. I love photographing people's lives, what they do for work or play. Whatever it is, it is usually fascinating, especially from the outside looking in. It's a window into a world that many of us don't see. I also know now that I need to sit still for a few days to gauge the breadth of a place or the people who live in it. Bare minimum three days. If I really want to work on something I need at least a week. Especially if I haven't done any research before coming to a place. Which is what is happening now as I find interesting things along the way, things which I didn't even know existed before. It's a lot of fun. Another thing that I'm using more of is natural light. Anyone that knew me in San Francisco, in my past life as the photog for Muni, knew that I always had a flash(s) ready to use. It was particularly useful when photographing inside a vehicle - it's golden for cable cars - where everything inside is shaded and everything outside the windows or doors is a few stops brighter. Bounce it off the roof and dial in just enough light so that the outside isn't blown out but the subject is lit. Camera in manual mode. It's even better when you can drag the shutter and get a blur of the landscape outside of the car. Depending on the cable car your in, the bounced light could be a little warmer if it has a stained wood roof like on most of the California Line cars and a few of the Powell and Mason/Hyde cars. A good number of them have white painted interior roofs which gives you a nice white light. I digress... I had my kit packed with three flashes for this trip. I'm keeping them close by because there will be a time when I need them, but for now I'm enjoying what's happening with natural light. So along with another project that I'm working on with historypin.com (more on that later). My objective on this trip is to find people to photograph. People who's culture, work or life is interesting to me. I'll still photograph the landscape, but only as it helps to tell the story of a place or the people in it. I've been writing, just not posting, over the next few weeks I'll talk about some of the places I've been and I've been to some very cool places and met some great people. For now here are a set of images from the past few weeks.
