Terrell Brothers Road Trip - Preface: We ain’t dead yet!
I call it the preface to the story, because it’s not the story . . . yet.
Yes, Len and I have been home for more than a week now, but life goes on and both of us came home to a flood of work and other things we had to catch up on. I called Len this past Saturday to find out how his images were and . . . he had just downloaded them that morning. Me? I downloaded them into Capture One right after the phone call. In short, we’re a bit behind the curve on sharing our story.
But do not fear, we are moving forward. So I decided to do a preface, beg for patience on your part, share some images, and tell a couple of funny bits from our extended trip. They may be scraps, but they’re all I have.
The images in this story are the ones I took with the Q2MR. All of them. Yeah, it’s the camera I used the least during this trip (not counting the backup Fujifilm body that, fortunately, was not needed). Despite my best hopes, too much was going on to spend a lot of time with the Q2MR. I made images with the new Fujifilm X-T5, the Q2MR, the LUMIX, and my iPhone. Yes, I include the iPhone because it’s a legitimate camera. Face it, all of the images from the last post (well, the photographs) were from either my or Len’s iPhone.
So what are the preface points I can make. Well, photographically I early on decided I was going to focus on two things. The first was to try and make more “landscape” images than I traditionally do. It’s a bit of an amorphous concept, but much of my image making is of “things” and of details/compositions. My goal was to make more images that include the greater landscape than I’d previously made. Ann commented that she’d noticed the shift in focus even in the iPhone images I sent her for the previous post.
The second goal was to be a bit more flexible in my image format ratios. Previously I’d photographed a lot in square and the normal sensor/35mm film format 2:3 ratio. The new X-T5 has several more ratios (including the 3:4 that I made many images with). But surprisingly, this goal led me to make a lot of 9:16 images, several of which I’m excited about. And then there was the image below, which was freed of any traditional aspect ratio and was photographed with these final cropped boundaries in mind while making the image. (I suspect the image will need work on my calibrated monitor in The Netherlands to produce a print that makes the sand-dune glow like it did while making the image).
To sum up the trip, Len and I had a blast. The days were long, the photography serious and the jokes continuous. Much as you’d expect with the two of us. Jill or Ann would add their own jokes and jibes whenever we were in cell-phone coverage (which was not as frequent as we’d hoped at times), as would folks we met along the way. I think we will forever remember our waitress at Duke’s in Hanksville, who called us “kiddies,” threatened to charge us double if we dared criticize breakfast (no way - it was delicious), and had us in stitches the whole time. I hope we gave her as much pleasure in our banter as she gave us (I told her to tell her manager that not giving her an opportunity to drink coffee that morning was an OSHA violation).
As for the photographic opportunities, it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Both in the planning (apologies for patting myself on the back, but I did a damn fine job of it), and in the execution of it (thank you Mother Nature). Sure, we had to endure a couple of sand storms (which did not keep us from photographing, but will surely add to my dust spotting on images), but we really only had one session (a sunset) that turned out to be a bust. Those few occasions, like at Dead Horse Point (see below), when we were unsure whether the light would come . . . well it did. We often had excellent light to photograph in.
Even some of the afternoons were blessed with high cirrus clouds, which softened the harsh mid-day sun to make decent photography possible (in this digital age) in the middle of the day.
And the desert was the desert, in all its complex glory. A day could go from bone chilling cold in pre-dawn to stupidly hot and back again the same day. The wind from dead still to Sahara sand storm in the time it takes to change lenses on a camera. Morning light changed from soft pastels to eye-blinding bright in a matter of minutes. The ground, wet and dry at the same time. And beware scraping a hand on the rocks, nonetheless a cactus. Life was everywhere, but the landscape barren . . . if you don’t see. In a word, it felt like home in that environment.
I was prepared, but not prepared enough. I realized in time the effect it would have on my fingernails. Travel and the desert are unforgiving to the nails. I’d recalled that just before we left, so and on one of our Walmart runs I picked up some clear fingernail polish. Realizing only after the fact (while I was applying it to my nails) that I wasn’t as smart as Ann about selecting clear polish (from a male perspective) and had forgotten to look for matte polish. No worries, who would notice clear glossy nails on a guy. Well, the next day Len and I lost it when, at the Starbucks counter, the server said, “I really like your nails. Good job!”
I was only partially prepared because I really should have grabbed that tube of Working Hands I saw when we were on the Walmart run. The nail polish saved my nails this trip, but the hands were dried, beaten and sore by the end of it.
Speaking about sore, well Len and I got into a competition of sorts involving the Winnebago Revel we traveled in. On the one hand, it didn’t take us long to get into a working rhythm with our morning packing routine within tight quarters (kudos Len!). On the other hand, Len and I did the brotherly one-up the other in bashing our heads within the confined spaces of the Revel. The cabinet above the sink, the elevating bed, and the shelf above the driving seats were the main culprits. I think I won (versus Len, not the Revel . . . word of advice, don’t try to head-butt any part of a vehicle). At least the multitude of marks on my scalp said I did (though I suspect that Len’s hair covered up more 3 Stooges moments than he’d care to admit).
Like all great road trips, it was full of unexpected adventures, exhausting, and was way, way too short. As expected, we didn’t do everything that was on the trip list. And the trip got cut short a day earlier than we’d planned (sorry Len, I guess we’ll have to have a Road Trip 2 so you can see the Grand Canyon). But that’s the way it goes with these things. At least we didn’t get hit by a hurricane!
So please be patient as we get our act together and begin the developing of images and the telling of stories on the road trip posts to come.