Hiawassee, Georgia

These are both sets of pictures taken in Hiawassee Georgia, two at Shane's family reunion and two at the Georgia Mountain Fair. For a good part of the trip this was our main destination. Getting to Shane's family reunion, and on time, was more on our minds than getting to the east coast. Riding 80 miles one day and 50 another, sometimes even 30 miles and occasionally just taking a rest day, our decisions about direction and time could have been considered whimsical but somehow we made it to Hiawassee. We not only made it but we made it on the first night of the family reunion just half an hour after dinner was served. It was quite amazing how it all worked out.  

Documenting Sculpture

I am sitting in the San Francisco Airport right now waiting to catch a midnight flight to New York. I came to San Francisco to photograph a wedding and also took some pictures for Erika Pahk. She wanted pictures that documented the "collars" she built in a class at Penland School of Crafts. We played around with different environments and light setups in Oakland and these were three of my favorite pictures.

Things Familiar

I don't feel like I need to write too much about this picture other than that it was taken in Helen, GA. 

Family

Left Behind

Things thrown away were a common theme in our travels. On several occasions we made camp in an abandoned homestead. When strapped for cash or just looking to be frugal we would look to grocery store dumpsters for freshly disposed food. Litter along the road is much easier thought about when bicycling as opposed to driving. I feel like so much can be learned about people by what they leave behind. By what isn't worth keeping, worth finishing or has simply lost its worth to time. 

One night we camped under almond trees in California. There was an abandoned pool and mansion there that were clearly let fall to waste when a larger farmer bought the almond grove. In Tennessee we explored a house that was left empty and half built for at least a decade when the owner went to prison, there were even paintings in the house that were left half finished with paint cans half empty. Some people have taken to recycling, others just let their waste slowly succumb to nature's will. In Kansas I found mountains of pallets that were in a backyard next to the giant beef slaughter houses in Dodge City. What were these places supposed to be like and what can we learn from the absence of those who once cared enough or not enough when they created them?

Animals

I want to keep doing pet photography like this.

Mysteries

Here are scenes that made me wonder about how they came to be like this and who made them that way. I suppose they are really more curiosities than mysteries. Thats what I lot of this work has become to me - simple curiosity. 

Desert Scale

The desert is a magnificent place because scale is so often inconceivable, everything is sparse, especially things made by man and the sounds that come along with those things. In some parts of the Mojave I would stop and place my bike next to the road. There would be no sound save my own breath and the rustling of my feet. Sounds would return when when Shane and Elspeth would begin to get closer and I could hear the noises of their bicycles. Mountains 30 miles away would appear easily approached afoot and trains could be heard through the silence but only appear as little glimmering boxes in the vast landscape. Sometimes stars would become nauseating. The few things that humans have build are startling in their presence because they are almost always obtrusive to the landscape and built solely for function.

We stayed in a rest area one night in a small town called Trona. The town was basically the infrastructure for a potash plant and its workers. The smell was horrible and there were sounds of explosions all night but the place was somehow beautiful.

Travel Companions

Before I posted too many thoughts and pictures from my bicycle trip on here I thought I'd better introduce my travel companions Shane Darwent and Elspeth Schulze. We went through a lot together and made it across in no small part do to help and learning from one and other.

Journey to the Summit

We were in the Great Sand Dunes National Park with hundreds and hundreds of tourists. Approaching the dunes we could see that many of the sight seers were trying to make their way to the peak of the highest dune at the front of the range. Why is it that it seems so natural for people to try and reach the top? Why do we challenge ourselves to these meaningless tasks and where on the journey do they gain meaning?

We were among the masses plodding through the sand, one step at a time, to reach the summit and it did, indeed, feel good to reach it.

The Life in Things

This summer I have found a lot of joy in searching for the life of things. I realized that something I really admired about my travel companion, Shane Darwent's photos was the questions they asked. Traveling with him made me look at things with a curiosity about the intentions of the people who constructed the landscapes and objects I was photographing. Some places that people leave behind tell so much more about them than a portrait would ever give.

These are two pictures of one grave in South Eastern Colorado that really struck me. I felt like I could really feel the love and intentions of the people who cared for this person without have a clue what they looked like or who they were.

Restart

I have been struggling with the idea that no one will ever care about my pictures as much as I do and the people who have a direct connection to the pictures I take.

There is a place in The Central Valley in California called Blackwell's Corner. It is a small general store with a soda fountain and aisle after aisle of shelves of almonds and pistachios of any named variety. When you leave the general store there is little more to look at than a dry place that was once a frontier called the American West. Blackwell's Corner was the last know stop for James Dean before he crashed his Porsche and died. The night before we camped next to another general store/restaurant that showed up as a town when seen on a road map. That place was called Cholame.

We had hoped to find a friendly house where we could pitch our tents on a small patch of grass in a vast desert. Instead I rode up to a green town sign that read "Cholame pop. 119." But there was no proof that the population was more than zero. There was an old cafe just up the road called The Jack Ranch Cafe and beyond that only more dry hills, rattle snakes and jack rabbits. They had a small patch of grass and a James Dean Memorial because after leaving Blackwell's Corner Dean crashed his car 400 yards down the road from the Jack Ranch Cafe in Cholame.

I found it pretty neat that James Dean lived a short life and became a fixed icon of American Spirit, but that he died next to a restaurant that was around long before he was even born and is still in business today. James Dean was a shooting star that burned out fast and brilliantly but I believe that American Spirit is more about tenacity and quietude. The ability for two small stops on a little travelled highway to weather over a century of life. They weathered in the same place where Steinbeck's family inspired The Grapes of Wrath, and through the assassination of great leaders, through World Wars and revolutions of equality - through history.

Riding a bicycle through these places gives them so much perspective. Often it felt like being a cowboy on horseback. We were vulnerable, self contained, just trying to find a place to sleep at night, food to eat and water to drink. The only other thing we had to have was curiosity and wander about the world around.

After experiencing these places the way I have and feeling history in the present I look at my pictures and truly care about them. I love them because they are of places holy and one day ancient. Places that our lives affected forever and that affect our lives forever, just as they did those who came before and those who will proceed us.

I was excitedly posting pictures as I scanned and spot toned them from this trip and now have taken them all down so that I can post more slowly and with introspection and writing that will let you know how much they mean to me and hopefully allow you to view them more deeply.

Rush