Did a fun but grueling job in Death Valley for Popular Mechanics recently. Allyson Torrisi from PM called and said 4 words: “you, motorcycles, death valley.” I said two: “hell yea.” The assignment was a feature on riding dual sport bikes in death valley. A duel sport is a bike that is an off road moto bike but is still street legal so you can ride it on road. There were going to be 5 riders on this 3 day trip. There were 3 popular mechanics editors, one death valley expert riding guide, and Jaime from Mythbusters, the one with the walrus mustache. Cool guy btw, and always a willing subject for my camera. My assistant Raul and I would be following them in an off road 4x4 and documenting the ride and making it look as cool as it was. These kinds of assignments are always tricky. Theres no real shot list, you’re shooting people on a fun trip so they don’t really want to be bugged with a camera that much, and in this case it was all going to be done in an extremely harsh environment. It was spring, so not 130 but still damn warm, highs in the upper 90’s, and chilly at night. I had a great time as usual but was completely worn out from the long days and the sun and wind. Did lots of climbing up cliffs ahead of them to get them from that angle where they’re small and just overpowered by the massiveness of the terrain. And to think only 5 days earlier I was in Alaska shooting a Field and Stream cover. Crazy cool things this job has taken me to. Tired but couldn’t say no. A huge highlight for me was on the first night, we were walking back to our rooms after dinner, and my assistant looked up and saw the stars like he never has as he hasn’t traveled to a place as remote as DV. The lack of “light pollution” in remote places makes the stars so amazing. It blew him away. I’ve been all over in the middle of nowhere from Alaska to Afghanistan and have seen some pretty amazing stars at night. But I always take it for granted now until I’m brought back down by a reaction like his. All in all the shoot went great, everyone was super nice and helpful, and the pictures looked great because of it. Got Henry a scorpion frozen forever in a block of resin in the gift shop……. On the way out of town on Monday afternoon raul and I encountered a dust storm in the middle of nowhere. The dust diffuses the light, it’s the kind of light photographers and cinematographers spend their whole lives trying to find or recreate. Shadows not too harsh, highlights not blown out. And a warmth from the dust that was luminous. It hit us just as we drove by a cemetery literally in the middle of nowhere with a chain link fence around it. We passed it, didn’t stop as I was downloading cards form the morotrcyle shoot, but it was gnawing at me as I knew it was too perfect and my love of this photography stuff always gets the better of me. After about 5 minutes the guilt and my obsession won out inspite of my exhaustion. “turn around raul”. He didn’t say a word. He knew. We turned around, drove to the cemetery, pulled over and made some pictures for nobody but ourselves, which are always the purest ones you make. Nobody to please, no hurry, no worry. I put the computer away after that and just watched the desert light change and fade away as we drove out. it was truly a great ending to this trip: kinda weird and noire-ish like a david lynch film, and achingly beautiful and lonely, like the California desert.
