(post by TR)
This morning I woke up somewhat inspired. I felt like writing, and since I don’t exactly get inspired to just ‘write’ very often (especially right after getting up), I thought I should come into the office and see what words might escape my fingertips and make their way onto the screen. For some inspiration, I browsed through some of my old favorite photos, and for whatever reason this first one stood out to me in particular. I don’t have a photographic memory, but I do remember photographs quite well, and I love the stories that each of them tell.
For a little back-story, perhaps one of my favorite things on earth is, well, adventuring. If you asked me to name a place I feel most in my element, I may describe to you a scene that involves me wearing worn-out leather gloves and my old Doc boots with the riding rings around my heels, a bandana, and wind whipping at my face while I blaze a path into some unknown land on a dirtbike. I like to think that I’m some kind of twenty-first century cowboy at heart, and some days if I had my way I’d just ride right into the dusty sunset with a big toothy grin on my face.
The photo above I took in China sometime in late 2003/early 2004, and it evokes in me feelings of freedom, adventure; wanderlust and beauty. A friend had come to visit me in China, and one day we decided to take our dirt bikes and just drive. We stuffed our packs with the necessities, geared up, and took off with the sunrise – our bikes’ loud exhaust piercing the still morning air as we rolled out of LiJiang toward the mountains in the distance. We drove that day until we reached the base of towering Haba-Shui-Shan peak, where the ‘Dragon’s Back’ of successively smaller peaks in this range begins. If I remember correctly, Haba is around 17-18,000 feet high at its summit, and it is an absolutely, dangerously beautiful sight. We slept in a small tourist outpost that was set up in a nook below the peak, and the next morning when I sidled over to my bike and hopped on, I happened to notice the mountain in my rearview, framed perfectly by my mud-encrusted mirror. I took out my old camera, and snapped the shot above before firing up the bike and continuing on our journey.
These peaks are the foothills of the Himalaya, and riding on the small roads that were carved into their sides was an adventure in itself. It wasn’t unusual for large sections of the road to be missing, once we came upon a section where a whole lane had given weigh and fallen into the abyss of the valley below. Sometimes we’d have to squeeze between boulders the size of small cars laying on the road, or stealthily avoid ice patches and large potholes. I loved every minute of it. I loved the feeling that I was in some kind of surreal place, the towering mountains above back dropped by a deep blue sky, the piercing green terraces of rice patties below, and me, hung right in the balance, observing it all unfold in front of my eyes as I throttled and geared my way along.
China is where I first began falling in love with photography. Perhaps I thought I could capture some of the beauty, some of this…indescribable, uncapturable feeling of life, of what it means to live to the fullest.
One of my goals when I shoot, regardless of whether it’s an engagement session, a wedding or a family shoot, is to inspire. I want to inspire people to be their truest selves, to see the best in themselves. I want to capture and communicate things that aren’t simply bits and bytes of a digital file; I want to tell a story of more than meets the eye. Because of this, I believe in the importance of what we do as wedding, portrait, and fine art photographers. I experience it myself on a regular basis.
Thanks for tuning in to this edition of morning thoughts, and enjoy the photos below. The first is another from China, and the last two are of our friends Matt Johnson and Emily Johnson. Matt is a doctor that loves to ride, and Emily is the owner of Mountain Rose Horsemanship Traning out of Boulder, and I think (and hope!) that these photos from last year captured a bit of them at their best, inspiring them. Have a good weekend, folks!
