The personal photography project is one of the most fragile pieces of the new freelance landscape. A project must be allowed to breathe and evolve, but many photographers allow only a select few into the developing stages. We are not only protecting our egos (and reputations if the work isn’t any good) but also potentially the project itself as today, just like back in college, there is a small risk that a good idea might be poached by another photographer long on motivation but short on imagination.

I’ve spent most of the last 2 weeks drawing up plans and seeking divine inspiration for a new project that I’m working on. During that time and for the last few months I’ve written this blog post at least a dozen times but I’ve deleted each because it didn’t feel right. But now that a trip is eminent and supplies have been shipped maybe it’s time to talk about the idea (which is at best a rough sketch) and the process itself. Also the fear of purloined genius doesn’t really factor in when the subject of my project is no less than the American west, one of the most well trod themes of 20th century photography.

These pictures here are not the project… they are basically the seeds of the genesis of the project. I really don’t know exactly if the project will look like these or even feel like these, but possible and probably neither.

Pioneers, as I’ve taken to calling my new project, began on JLP’s last trip out west camping our way around the Grand Circle when I got an itch in the back of my brain about the modern west and it’s strange, untamed, emptyness. As an east coast kid we learn in school that the west was won, developed, and parceled out during the gold rushes and manifest destiny of the early to mid-19th century, in the hey day of the migrant trails, most famously the Oregon Trail, known to my generation vividly because of the video game of the same name that made computer lab in kindergarten pretty awesome (maybe my next project will be on Carmen Sandiego?!) But the experience of traveling through the west today is exhiliratingly different than that simplified textbook chapter heading.

The west is essentially a well-fenced desert playground inhabited by the same personalities as those who struck out on a 6 month wagon trip from Independence, Missouri to the green valleys of the Pacific ocean. The landscapes is so vast that giant cities like L.A. and Vegas and Salt Lake feel like tiny dots… and if you drive even a half hour outside of the suburban limits of some of these cities, especially Vegas or Phoenix, you find yourself in another century with little to bring you back except long distance power and phone lines and the promise of a McDonald’s 68 miles down the road.

Essentially my project plan is to travel around the west and trace the historic sites and emigration routes of my American ancestors (metaphorically since my true relatives have staid put on the east coast since 1638, thank you very much) to discover, without sentimentalism, what the modern west looks like and maybe answer the question of whether the west was or ever could be won. Additionally I want to explore visually the way in which the west is sold back to itself to tourists every summer from the comfort of their RVs, reinventing the “pioneer” life along the way.

These images were obviously (to me) shot digitally and that is one of the reasons why they won’t be a part of the project if it’s ever finished. They are pictures of a dozen miles or more and through the digital sensor they feel compressed somehow. Film just has a scope and contrast in the subtle gradients that my digital camera (or personal skills?) just can’t touch. So I recently bought myself a used Mamiya, the 4th of my career, to try to capture that richness and also to change my shooting habits since this project is obviously a little different than what I typically shoot on assignment and I could use the slowing down.

Thus far the RZ feels completely awkward in my hands as I lug it around my new neighborhood working on a different project that will probably not be blog fodder anytime soon. As example yesterday I was shooting near Columbus Circle when Letterman regular and Hello Deli owner Rupert Jee walked into my frame. Not that he would have made it a good picture, he definitely would not have, but I struggled to quickly make a frame but forgot to pull my dark slide. When changing lenses I also dropped a lens cap on the street and it rolled under a large truck so that wasn’t graceful either.

I’m leaving for Colorado next week, first to visit with my awesome friends Jen & Eric, and then to hit the road through Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah and discover what the new project is all about.