I recently returned from a roadtrip to an unfamiliar place where I spent much of the time alone, just driving or wandering around. It was the most refreshing thing I’ve done in a long time and though I was only gone a week or so I felt like it had been months since I was in North Texas.
Here are some images from along the way where I felt some serenity. A few of them are from a new series called modern growth which is about the remnants of man’s intersection with nature where man is no longer predominant and nature is reclaiming space man once used. Most of the trip I was in a bubble of relatively untouched land and even the passageways to get there were quite dichotomous to the manicured roads of our metropolitan areas. Despite being less neat in an aesthetic sense it felt more free and not surprisingly, more natural.
I had originally brought a Fujifilm X100S to take photos of the habitats of what we found. It has a fixed focal length 35mm equivalent lens which is what I usually shoot when doing street photography or environmental portraits. I appropriated that camera for modern growth because depending on what you shoot, it can feel open but still intimate in a sense.
I consciously realize as I get older how important it is for me to have different kinds of motion in my life. I feel like intuitively I’ve always been vaguely aware of it and have acted accordingly but now that my resources and responsibilities are different I feel stifled and claustrophobic.
This was actually supposed to be a post with a positive tone. Being on the road was great…I guess it’s just hard to come back.