CANNONBALL
Role: Photographer - These images might not mean anything to anyone else but me, and I’m entirely okay with that. When did we go from taking photos just to have memories to needing to take photos to prove something to the world? Look what I went and did. We’ve always been doing it, but it’s different in modern times. It’s too fleeting. We’re not inviting people over to talk about how it went, or why we loved the place, and these are all things that used to happen. Before social media, what did sharing photographs look like for the common man? Not the art shows, or the magazines, but to really show someone a set of photos about what you had been up to?
I’ve wanted to be a photographer for as long as I can remember. Getting my first camera in 2003 from my Aunt Teresa springboarded into blowing through roll after roll before I saved all the money from my summer job to buy my first modern camera. Brand new, from the camera store. A Canon Elan 7E. It wasn’t about the camera, or how it was capture. It was just captured. One year we were using these $7 waterproof cameras, the next year I got a Canon WP-1 for $2 at the S.O.S, I’d try to pull out the SLR when I had a chance, but it was more about just catching something. There’s not many night photos because let’s face it, I couldn’t just crank the ISO on the film already in the camera, and most of the camera I owned at the time couldn’t even handle Ilford 3200.
Cannonball was the first trip where I truly tried to capture things as they happened. Even when shooting skateboarding or mountain biking you’re spending an afternoon sessioning something until you get the right trick or hit. With Geronimo we didn’t have time to linger. We hit the spot, and it was on to the next.
This trip was eye-opening in so many ways that I couldn’t even understand at the time of its happening and I never would have expected to spend so many years why trip felt so formidable. A trip of a lifetime that I’d come to realize could never be repeated, even though we tried.
We caught fish with our bare hands, wound up in at a random house party for Karaoke, lost a few swimsuits, watched two people make love under the stars in their jeep at the local rodeo,
It took years for me to realize that all I’ve ever wanted to do was inspire people to find these moments in their own life. It was never about inspiring people to do what we did, or even go to the same spots (cough cough, Instagram), I even remember a friend remarking that if this trip was 10 years later it would have been a scenario that we could make a living off going on these trips together because of social media. Honestly, I’m happy there wasn’t an alternate motive. We just really wanted to go do this thing, and we did it. It was always about encouraging people to find their own version. For me it was a blend of risk, uncomfortable situations, small victories, new friendships, and finding a voice to push myself further.