I started shooting the Travels project around 1994, and continued for the following 5 years. In that time, I traveled with my hat and Rolleiflex 2.8G from Los Angeles to Seattle and points between. I shot over 120 rolls of Tri-x film during that time, had everything printed on the now defunct Kodak Ektalure-G paper and then the prints sat in boxes for the next ten years.
In many ways, this project was a paradigm shift in the way I thought about photography. Before I would shoot any film, any camera, any object without much regard for continuity, or for that matter, concept. But when I came up with the idea for Travels, I took a step back and asked myself, What single camera do I want to shoot this whole thing on, and what single film?
It was that deciding moment that set the mold for many things to come. It was a departure from the roads of mish-mash, and big bold step onto the highway of conceptual photography. To this day, I still follow the same procedure when I start a new project (like "Paper").
So, 10 years after I finished shooting Travels, I had a week off from work and decided to finally make something of it. I downloaded the BookSmart® software from Blurb.com and went to work. A couple days of tweaks and I was satisfied. I uploaded the file to Blurb, and ordered a few books. It arrived yesterday, my first self published book, 15 years in the making. What I find interesting and inspiring is that the images have not aged one day, they are still as fresh and exiting as the day I shot them.
The quality of the books is very good, not what you would get if Taschen or Phaidon published it, but then I don't have to wait another 15 years for a book deal. Here it is:
