Archive for March, 2010

Just a quick training update: I’ve put about 300 miles on the bike in the last 10 days. I’m averaging about 40 miles a day this wek and will be building on that. If the weather holds out I’m hoping to get in a long ride tomorrow of about 60 miles or so.

I’ve got about 10 weeks to get ready, so I need to start adding weight and miles, and get rid of my current bike and get one built for touring (mine has too much carbon which is fun and fast but not meant for hauling gear).

I’ve got  sales page up on the site check it out on the menu under “buy prints” Get a cool signed picture for your wall and help me buy my tour bike!

March 31: The Last Thing I Remember

Detail of the brake lights on Josh’s Prius. When he manages to stop he takes some pretty good pictures.

Finally have the basic store figured out for the website.

March 30: Hurry Up and Wait

The last class of next session will be on June 16. It means I’ll be leaving a little later than I had thought but it will give me more time to be better prepared. As much as I’d like to leave right now I’m not even close to being ready. Waiting isn’t so bad as long as you know that there will be an end to the waiting at some point. I’ll leave on Monday, June 14.

42 miles today with an extra 10 pounds tossed on the back pack. Who knew ten pounds could weigh so much?!

March 29: Bikes, Cameras, Action

Personal projects allow us to explore our creativity and look at new ideas without the constraints of other people’s expectations or the needs of clients. Since we aren’t making a product for a specific use we are free to explore whatever avenue feels right. The result can be a new direction for our careers, different ways of seeing, new techniques, or even a new or reawakened sense of what to do next.  My picture of the day project has done all of that and more, and I can only imagine where it will take me in the next 9 months.

Creatively, POTD has helped me learn to see the beauty in the big picture – in the past many of my shots have been close-ups or retouched to “clean up” the scene. I removed lampposts, wires, bits of trash – all the things that I enjoy about what I see in the images this year. In the past, I prejudged my photos before I even pushed the button, thinking about what to take out or change later, and sometimes even leaving a perfectly good shot just floating untaken because there were too many things that didn’t meet my definition of ‘good’. The more that I learn to see without judgment, the more beautiful the world becomes. Learning to see again has probably been one of the greatest gifts of the project.

New ways of seeing have lead to the desire to see even more. I’ve always been happiest when going someplace new, meeting new people, seeing new things, learning more about the big wide world we live on. The POTD project has reminded me of the joy of walking down a street and finding hidden treasure everywhere I turn.

So I’m going to do that for a while.

I’m going to travel around the country by bicycle
making photographs of all the cool people I meet and places I see.

My initial goal is to make a large loop around the country seeing as many things and meeting as many people as I can. The slightly more ambitious goal is to keep going after that, maybe hit some other countries as well. Much like when I started the POTD project, I don’t know how this will turn out. I may get a hundred miles down the road and totally puss out – or I may just keep going even after the year is over. Right now I’m stoked at the thought of this new great adventure – it’s been far too long since the last one.

Now for a few details:

Who: Me, my bike, my cameras

What: traveling around the country on the bike camping and staying with people I meet along the way

Where: Right now the rough plan is to do a lap around the country. I’ll start off heading up North to Washington State; from there I’ll take the northern route across the country, hoping to arrive in New England in the fall. Does anyone know when the leaves change color? I’d like to see that. Anyway, after New England I’ll spend autumn riding down the east coast arriving in Florida in time to spend Christmas at my folk’s house. (I haven’t spent a Christmas there since like 1994 or something.) After the holidays I’ll travel down to the keys – hey it’ll be winter I want to stay warm – before heading back up through Florida and taking the southern route west across the country to California. Josh and Diana are getting married next May and I really gotta be there for that so this part of my journeys should wrap up right around then. After I’m back in LA I’m really not sure what the next step will be. If the project is going good I’d like to spend at least one more year touring the US before taking the bike overseas, but that is still many, many miles away. For right now I’m just concentrating on that initial leg up north.

When: I’ll be ready to go on June 1. I’ve got one last big session of FIDM work coming up next month – enough work that it should help finance a big chunk of the gear I need to get for the journey. I’m still waiting to hear from all of the instructors I work with, but we should be finishing up in early June. Once I post the last of their shots I’ll hop on the bike and head north.

Why: That’s always the question isn’t it? The first reason is because I want my life to be a story. At the end of things I want to look back and know that I did everything I could do to fully understand and explore the world I was born on. I don’t want to finish the work day and come home and watch tv. The world is bigger than that.  I like bikes, I like meeting people, I like taking pictures and writing stories, and I’d like to earn a living doing all of those things. Walking is too slow, and driving is too fast. Exploring the world on a bike is the perfect to speed to get you where you want to go while keeping you close enough to the landscape to see as much as possible along the way. But more than anything it comes down to the age old question of what I want my life to look like when it’s over. I want a story worth telling.

How: How am I going to pull this off? How will I manage without regular work, without knowing where the next meal is coming from, without having a stable roof over my head each night? That’s where you come in. Because a big part of this project is about creating a portrait of America, this journey is very heavily dependent on other people. I need you almost more than I need myself . Here’s where you come in:

• First – Let me shoot you! The portraits are the biggest part of the project so in exchange for  putting me up for the night (All I ask is a meal and a place to set up my tent though I won’t turn down a couch), you get a portrait sitting, a print from the sitting, and of course the joy of my company. If you like the portraits you will be able to buy additional prints which will further fund the trip.
• Second – Let me shoot your friends!  This is where it gets good and ‘social networky’ . Most of my Facebook friends have a least about a hundred other friends scattered around the country. Tell them about the project and have them send me a friend request – should I put up a ‘fan’ page?  I’ll be keeping everyone up to date on my whereabouts via FB, twitter (@bigrhinodog), and the blog. When I get close to a town I’ll take reservations for sittings in the area.
• Third – buy my stuff! In addition to photos of people I’ll also be documenting the journey and updating the POTD files each day as well as adding other images to the adventure file. You’ve all been bugging me to sell the prints so here’s your chance! Buy a print and get cool art for your home while helping a bicycle vagabond maintain a life of happy creative vagabondary (is that a word?)
• Buy my “real world” stuff – I’m selling it all! The couch, the computer, the chair, the tables, the knives, the forks, the spoons, the bed. I don’t need em so they’re all up for sale. Most of it will be on craigslist locally, but I’ll toss some crap up on eBay too just for kicks.
• Finally – Read, comment, pray, meditate, or whatever it is you do. There’s all kinds of crazy stuff out in the world, like bears, and snakes, crazy people, drunk drivers, storms, snow, wind, heat, mountains, girls who will try to marry me, guys who will want to kill me, and a million other reasons to stop riding. Knowing that you are watching, reading, and waiting for the next post will be a big help in pushing me to keep going through the tough times.

What come next: For the next several weeks I’ll be preparing for the trip. I’m already riding 30-40 miles a day so I will up the mileage and start to add weight. I need to sell all my stuff since I don’t need it and need to buy the gear I do need. I’ll still post the POTD every day as I have been but I’ll also be talking about preparations for the trip. Getting ready will be an experience in and of itself.

To help finance the trip, I’m putting  up a store on the site selling prints. From now until June I’ll be signing all of the shots before sending them to you. (I won’t be able to sign prints once I am on the road unless you have one and I see you along the way.) If you want a signed “first edition” print from the earliest days of this project then go to the site and order a couple of shots, Let me know if you want me to write a message on them or if you just want my name – I’ll even leave them un-scribbled on if you prefer that. You get a cool photo and I get one step closer to making this plan a reality.  Click here to order prints

I need to shoot some portraits – I don’t want to start the trip with nothing in the bag, so all of you so-cal peeps, hit me up and let me come shoot you.

One big hurdle: My dogs. They have been my very best friends and really are the best dogs I could ever ask for. I need to find a home for them. I’m looking for someplace stable where they can be together as part of a family, have access to the outdoors – either a yard or trips to the dog park, and live their lives as happy pups. I’d like to be able to visit them occasionally though it would be wrong to ask someone to just watch them for a year – after that much time they’ll be bonded to you and you to them – so I am looking for a new permanent home for them to be a part of. You can see photos of them at  this flickr gallery and can call or email me for more info. My number is 310-750-5327 and the best email is chiplatshaw@yahoo.com If you know anyone who may be interested in adopting them please have them get a hold of me and we’ll arrange an introduction. This is by far the hardest part of the journey, but I am confident that we can find a good home for them and we can all move on to the next phase of our lives.

So there it is. This is either the greatest or the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. Instead of fitting the picture of the day into my life every morning, I’m going to stuff my life into the picture. I hope you’ll all come along for the ride, the world is about to get big again.

March 28: San Gabriel #4

There is a lot to see along the river. This is about 20 miles from home at the turnaround point on my bike ride.

20 miles up the San Gabriel and headed for home.

getting ready for a bike ride

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March 27: San Gabriel River #3

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March 26: Making Magic

This red suitcase showed up at my door shortly after my grandmother passed away. It was crammed full of my grandfather’s stuff – all the usual grandfather things like scarves, and cards, and rings, and boxes with false backs, and coins with two heads. Tucked into a silk side pocket in the case was a black wooden rod with white tips. A piece of paper was wrapped around it with a single carefully written line of text.

“My first magic wand – 1932”

My Grandpa Hans was a magician and an occasional writer. I have no idea what he did for a career because to me he was always a magic man with a refrigerator stocked with red soda, a cupboard full of musical instruments, and a workshop in the basement with hundreds of neatly labeled little boxes stuffed with interesting bits of life. He could even pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Magic moments are those times when everything in the universe seems to line up just right – a bird flies through the frame just as you snap the photo, the right words float through your brain when you are sitting at your desk instead of standing in a crowded bus, the turkey is tender and juicy and the gravy rich and smooth at Thanksgiving dinner. In every case, it takes a remarkable confluence of events for the magic to happen. The bird had to be flying by at the right time, the temperature of the oven had to be right, the flour and butter had to make the perfect roux for the gravy etc. But all of those things may have happened anyway and nothing magical would have happened if you hadn’t been there to put it all together.

Without the magician there is no magic. “Abracadabra” is bullshit. It’s not the magic words that make it happen – it’s not the way the magician moves his hands. It’s the fact that the magician is present in the moment. Everything else is just a trick.

What I have learned is that when my life lacks magic the missing ingredient is usually me.

I’m about to start the biggest, most ridiculous project I have ever attempted; it may or may not work out. I was talking to a friend about it and they asked “how do you think you would you feel if you didn’t do this?” and it was one more thought that said I have to try.

Sometimes all you can do is wave your hand over the hat of your life and say the magic words “Here we go” And see what magic comes.

On Monday I’m going to tell you what my next project is.

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March 25: Fear is a Dead Fish

The project I have in mind is more than a day trip. More than a vacation, it is a change in focus. And is scares me. Usually I’m fine in the middle of the day when I am busy with work or riding the bike. But in the early morning hours when all the hype has been stolen by sleep, I lay in bed and listen to the dogs breathe and I am scared.

I am scared that this is a mistake. I am scared that I will lose what is most dear to me. I am scared that I will fail, I am scared that I won’t even try, I am scared of what will happen if I don’t try. I’m scared that I will get part way and quit. I fail far more often than I succeed and I fear that this will be one more failure.

I mentioned the project to a friend and they said “This sounds like the time you went on that hike and you didn’t make it”. And I knew they would mention that, and I’m scared that they may be right.

Fish can suffocate. It happens when for whatever reason all the oxygen in the water gets used up. It occurs most frequently in salt water – fresh water holds more O2 than salt water, and warm salt water holds even less. A place like the Salton Sea in the middle of the desert is a recipe for death – when the summer winds kick up, they stir up algae blooms which quickly die and as the decaying matter sinks it sucks the remaining oxygen out of the water and millions of fish perish.

The fish die because they are trapped in one place, as millions of little bits of decay suck the life from the water. My fear is a dead fish. A warning – you cannot breathe in this place.

I talked to another friend who said, “This is the best idea you’ve ever had, and if you don’t at least try it then you never get to tell me another idea because after this one they all will suck!” and they are right too.

The sun comes up and I am brave again. The dogs hop down off the bed and run to the kitchen to stand by their leashes waiting for their morning walk. I look out the window at the bright blue sky and think about the places out there in the future, pick my little point-n-shoot up off the nightstand and walk out to the kitchen. “Who are the good puppies?!” I ask and the dogs dance around in circles excited at the prospect of the days adventures.

I mentioned to Andrea that I wanted to possibly shoot out at Salton Sea but had never been there before. “When do you want to go?” came the reply email. And so early on a Friday morning, we threw the bikes into the back of her subaru and headed off to the desert to look at broken stuff.

Along the way we found snacks, dead fish, old porn, new life, cold beer, tasty tacos, broken stuff, blue skies, a mountain made for Jesus, Pink Trailers, burned chairs, and a million little nooks and crannies around the great lake that is never what it is supposed to be and more than anyone asked for. There was so much to see that we never even took the bikes out of the back of the car.

Andrea called it much needed mini-road trip. I said it was one of my favorite bike rides ever. It was a reminder of how big the world can be, and one more step in the right direction.

Here are some pictures from the beautiful wasteland of California’s Imperial Valley.

Credit where its due: The portraits of me were taken by Andrea. Check out her blog at www.andreabricco.com/blog

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March 24: Spare Change

OK, here’s how it works. In most cases doing something is always better than doing nothing. It really doesn’t matter what the decision is as long as you make one and act on it. Many times though, you really don’t care what happens – where you go to dinner, which Friday night activity to try, whether to go to church or go fishing. Go for a bike ride, or run. In cases like this, the quarter is a valuable decision making tool.

Give a choice to each side of the coin – heads is church, tails is fishing – hold the quarter for a moment and think your thoughts about the choice in front of you. Tell yourself that whichever side the coin lands on is your choice.

Flip it.

Here’s the cool part: once the coin leaves your hand, one of three things will happen.

One Possibility – You really truly don’t care which option you choose. In this case you let the quarter fly and let it make the call – there is a great deal of joy in randomness.

Another  chance is that the quarter leaves your hand and suddenly you know the answer you want – the risk of letting fate decide your future brings instant clarity. In this case, what happens to the quarter doesn’t matter – it’s done its job.

Finally, The coin lands, you look at it – feel your sense of ‘rightness’ about the choice it has made and go from there. Sometimes when I am close to a decision, the coin can gives me just enough of an nudge  to help make up my mind.

If you aren’t happy with the coins choice, feel free to take that as a sign that what you really want is the other option. In all cases, know that don’t have to do what the quarter wants to do. The quarter is there to help you decide, not to bind you to its choice, it is, after all, just a quarter. It’s an easy trick and it has served me well for many small meaningless choices in my life. Sometimes when life itself feels meaningless, it helps bring clarity to next steps too.

It’s early in the morning – still dark outside – and I’m still half asleep when I grab a quarter off the pile of laundry money sitting on the dinette. I think my thoughts, balance the cool metal on the tip of my thumb, and let it go. With a ping the coin leaps into the air, spinning and sparkling under the light of the chandelier. I snatch it from the small sky of the kitchen and slap it down on the back of my hand. I pull my hand away. Stare for a long moment at the quarter and its opinion of my life. Look at the bike leaning on the wall, then back at the quarter. Clarity.

I’m going to need bigger thighs.

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March 23: Mt Kailash, Tibet

I didn’t take this picture, a nun did nearly 10 years ago. It is said that for every circumambulation a pilgrim makes around holy mount kailash, a lifetime of negative karma is purged.  It is supposed to be a transformative, life changing event. What I’ve learned is that it is much easier to be transformed while you are 20,000 feet above sea level and the only English speaking person for miles than it is when you are back in the states trying to make next months rent, build a career, and blah blah blah.

On the last day of last year I wrote a post about Gates. I talked about listening to the right people, doing the right things, following the right order, and hating life. I wasn’t very happy with myself or the way things were going at the time. In the post, I said,

“The battle was far from over though, and for all these past years, the two of me have been fighting it out – the one who says to listen to everyone else, and one who says to listen to the wind.

One of them needs to die.”

The next morning I took a picture of some buildings across the street, and started the picture of the day project. I didn’t have high hopes for it – having high hopes was something I had stopped doing – I just wanted to feel good again, to see things, to find at least one cool thing every day.

I was amazed when I made it through the first week. I was Shocked when I made it through the first month without missing a day, in spite of moving and having limited time and internet connectivity. By the time I finished February, it was a habit. I post a picture every day. Sometimes early and sometimes late, but every day I have to post my picture.

At first it was easy, there are plenty of things to shoot, but after a while I began to wonder if the story could be bigger than just Los Angeles or long Beach. Friends offered advice like “sell the prints” or “Write a book” but I was still learning to really see again; still relearning the basics. I spent years learning how to make images, this spring I have been learning why I do it.

And with every photo, the desire to see more has grown, my wandersoul, dormant for too long, started stirring – whispering in my brain about gates and roads and miles of unseen sky. Experiences piled up with the pictures, each one rushing past whispering “there’s more, there’s more”.

The picture of the day was about seeing the stories in life, but stories don’t usually just come wandering by – you have to go get them. You have to live life if you want to photograph it, or write it. Recently I told a friend, “If everything you do is safe, you end up with nothing worth saving.”  I got home and realized I was really talking to myself.

I don’t fit here. I never really have, and it’s time to listen to the voice that has been right all along. This story is about to get interesting.