Tripping Overland —

BOP Retrospective 2005-2010

“To take a photo just for taking a photo is pointless. The photographer is like a storyteller who helps the other to open the doors of their consciousness. We could call it a humanistic photography…” … [Continue Reading]
China Fakes – Vegetarian Chinese food at Xuxiangzai

I’m sitting in a Czech restaurant in Ulan Bator drinking Budweiser (the real one) and missing the one thing about China that Mongolia cannot replicate: the food. Wondering what to order, other than copies of eastern European fare and after three weeks of forced consumption of mutton tail, freeze-dried beef, and yak fat (there’s not… [Continue Reading]
Sunday at the Getty Center

Located in the lowland foothills in the beginnings of the Santa Monica Mountains, just above the 405 freeway in a northerly Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, this is the oilman J. Paul Getty’s gift to the masses. This free museum (parking is $15), designed to pay homage to various Greek & Roman history, specializes in… [Continue Reading]
Shell Oil Arctic Drillship Noble Discoverer Runs Aground in Dutch Harbor

Saturday, July 14th, 2012 the Shell Oil Arctic Drillship Noble Discoverer, one of two Shell ships that will drill exploratory oil wells in the Arctic waters of Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, came loose from its moorings in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and ran aground on Airport Beach in Unalaska Bay. The Coast Guard, which is… [Continue Reading]
Trekking Mongolia – Chasing the Great Khan Pt. 2 – the Ger District

The only thing tougher than the Mongolian people is the land. Finally arriving in Ulan Bator after the thirty hour overnight train from Beijing one quickly sees just how rugged the country still is: littered with the carcasses of all kinds of livestock from the harshest winter in ten years, the sere high-desert landscape (over 1500 meters) is southern California brown well into late May. Forget the slow trudging through Inner Mongolia (technically China) and the imperceptibly changing terrain slowly arcing along the western edge of the Gobi desert – ostensibly a wasteland for ruined Chinese settlements and the government subsidized farmers vainly trying to assuage the pounding winds carrying sand westward by planting trees – U.B. (as it’s known around town) is the wild American west of the 19th century transplanted 10,000 kilometers away in 21st century central Asia.
Dames and Drinks the Best of 2011

It ain’t over till the sexy lady sips her Manhattan, Holy Headbuzz Batman! was it a good year for dames I’ll never see again and drinks I will remember for the rest of my life. The list of new bars on the map is a long one: New Orleans’ Checkpoint Charlies. San Antonio’s Esquire Tavern.… [Continue Reading]
On Packing Up On Moving On – Tripping Overland Up North

I wake from a dreamless sleep in a dark cold. It feels as if there is nothing around me, not even the ground on which I lie, though I take this for granted as I am not falling. Trembling, I push myself up and attempt to feel my way through the chill nothingness, though where… [Continue Reading]
Riding the Dog – Across America by Greyhound Bus

Come on, Bryce. There are a lot more important problems than Sri Lanka to worry about.” “Like what?” “Well, we have to end apartheid, for one, slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless…and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while… [Continue Reading]
Street Photography Examined

“What happens when you interrogate yourself? What happens when you begin to call into question the tacit assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions and begin then to become a different kind of person?” –Dr. Cornell West I have long tried to get at the underlying philosophy of Street Photography. What is it exactly that makes a normal… [Continue Reading]
To Russia With Love – West on the Trans-Mongolian Express

Leaving Beijing on the Trans-Mongolian train (actually called Train 3 or 5 in Mongolia & Rossiya in Russia, Trans-Mongolian is the unofficial moniker) you exit the ancient capital to the southwest. “Huh?” blinking, careening toward the setting sun for so long you think you’ve gotten on the wrong train. It takes a while to snap… [Continue Reading]