Last weekend I did a workshop in Sacramento. It was a small, but very vibrant group. It also rained both days… all day. We made do with a nice rental studio on Saturday, and a hotel conference room on Sunday. When it would clear for a few minutes, we headed out to the stormy day to get a few shots. All in all, it was a really great workshop. Fantastic talent and creative photographers (who also rolled with Ma Nature’s punches).

On the Monday after the workshop, I had decided to take a later flight back so I could spend some time shooting. The Sierra Foothills are a favorite of mine. I have shot there before, and was looking forward to doing it again.

The stormy skies and wet weather was clearly a bonus. The images here are the skies as they looked. Yeah, I had to boost a little contrast, but not much Pshop on them other than contrast and some slight desaturation. I also use Tony Kuyper’s fantastic Luminosity Masks in most of my work. Most of my lighting gear is stowed in a Standbagger “Grab ‘n Go”, and my travel Canon case contained all the lenses I need for a trip like this. And I actually only used one… the old 20-35MM 2.8 L. I love that lens. We are growing old together.

Here is my little trip. The road right off of 16 becomes dirt about half way in. I should actually say mud. Actually there were parts where it was simply a raging stream. Rental cars… gotta love ’em.

Right off the main road and on to the small ranch road I am face to face with this old tree. I love winter trees. They have such a strong and graphic presentation of branches laid bare for inspection.

The first time I came through this area I was on a chopped Honda 750. Extended forks, suicide bars, Fu-Manchu mustache and a pony tail. The chopper had a box on the back with my wardrobe (t-shirts, jeans, boots and toiletries). It also held my old Toyo Field camera, 8 holders, a Polaroid back, and 100 sheets of PlusX. I was out to make the images that were in my head. I saw things in black and white those days. There was a fierceness to the way I approached the road, and the way I approached photography. I lived it.

Photography was simply everything to me at the time, and I took every moment I could to get into the field to make photographs.

The flared pipes raising into the air like a rooster tail were growly, but not too loud. Just enough to know that we were moving. Usually pretty fast. It was not unusual to have to turn the bike around to go back to make the shot. A small Gitzo was stuck into a rifle holster and did the little Toyo just fine.

This little straight spot was the last pavement for about 5 miles. The sky was amazing, the road so full of life – and mystery.

These days I am comfortable in my rented Dodge. In those days I would have had an old Army poncho over me, some big glasses and enough healthy youth to not get pneumonia after riding in the rain and cold. So much has changed.

So much has stayed the same.

I still love making images, but I am not the fierce young man I once was. I am slower, more deliberate now. I wait for the images to come to me more than I once did. But I see more than I once did. I think it is a wash.

Where I would shoot and shoot and shoot, I now take my time and look for the shot to be revealed. Sometimes it is revealed pretty quick, and sometimes it takes some prolonged effort. The digging and revealing is part of the fun. And it is still fun.

Fences and trees on the horizon have always been a favorite subject matter for me. Fences flow horizontally, and trees reach up to the stormy skies. Fences keep things in – or out. Depends so much on which side of the fence one is on.

I miss the old Toyo. I miss the old Gitzo and the changing bag with the tied-dye neckerchief tied to the side of it. I miss the bike. God how I miss the bike.

I rode for about 12 years. No major crashes, and only one near miss. Very near. Riding a motorcycle and making images was what I did. Music was still a big part of my life, but that is another story for another day. I will only say that I was considered rather unique in the music department of ASU. So few ‘hoodlums’ in the music theory and composition department… heh.

The first time I hit Highway 49, it was after coming over Sonora Pass on a hot July day. At least it was hot in the foothills. Coming over the pass from 395 about froze my __ off. I stopped in a little restaurant and made my first couple of images there. Met a girl named… named… uh.

I spent about 5 days going up highway 49 from Sonora. Investigating every side road I could find.

Side roads.

Did you ever take a side road? Did it ever lead you to something new? Something unexpected?

Yeah. I have been more surprised and delighted on side roads than on the ones where everyone is going about 80 with their windows rolled up and the radio blasting.

I thought this looked like a movie set. Could almost hear Frodo and Sam chatting in the woods beyond.

We need to have that wind in our hair every now and then. We need to take some side roads more often. We need to make ourselves fierce again, and hungry again and stop riding around with the windows rolled up.

Rolled up windows shut out the life around us. Riding a bike keeps the world around us part of us.

Like photography.

Photography reveals what is beyond our rolled up windows. It takes the little piece of life we experience and fixes it for us. It gives us that point in time, that place in the world, that tree in the pond context. The context of us, without the context of time.

The images we see are fixed in time while we keep on moving and growing and changing.

And aging.

Highway 49 is still there. But it, like me, has changed.

The road goes to mud, and becomes somewhat of a stream bed at this point. I asked for advice from the my bovine admirer, but she wasn’t really into talking at the time.

No longer is the road wild and small, with turns that challenged even the best driver – or rider. It has been widened, with passing lanes for tourists pulling their trailers and families on vacation in big rolling buses. It is smoother, with less edge to it. Maybe it grew up a little.

And I no longer have a pony tail… or a fu-manchu.

I don’t go out on the road as much as I used to. My edges are smoothed, and my time curtailed more than it was in the heady “bike years”.

But it doesn’t stop the longing. The desire for the open road, the wind in the hair (hell, just the hair) and that excitement of mounting that Toyo, focusing the old Nikkor or Schneider and knowing, just KNOWING, that I got something I love.

I had to wait till I got home to get them developed. Then the waiting for the time to make the contact sheets, editing and final hours in the darkroom as I wrestled that image on to a sheet of Seagull.

We don’t do that anymore, and yet… we still have no time to do what we love. Maybe we do, but we don’t think we do. Maybe we forgot how time works.

The hills were so saturated that they began hemorrhaging water. This spring started right up the hill.

Time will take the edges off, wear down the sharpness until it is smooth. Fear and worry take the wind from our hair, and we buy into the ‘grown up’ responsibilities that, at some point in our lives, we find to be utterly bogus. We live so hard when we are young… as if life were forever.

When the sand gets thinner, we stop living to our real potential. And we get really really good at making excuses. Gotta get that done. Gotta get this done.

Bullshit. We gotta get another bike. We gotta find another road.

We gotta make the time belong to us.

The little glade just seemed to be waiting for a pair of lovers to come along with a picnic lunch and a thirst for life full of surprises.

I don’t know if I will ever get another bike. I don’t know if I will shoot Highway 49 again. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring and what next week will reveal.

I don’t frankly care. I want to be surprised. I want to be enchanted by the light like I was last Monday.

I want to make more photographs. I want to see more side roads. That is how I tame the terrible bitch, time.

Thanks for taking a kind of different trip with me. Follow me on Twitter, and see more about the Lighting Workshops on Learn to Light. Upcoming in Omaha, West Palm Beach and Detroit.