about
My name is Ryan, I’m a 24 year old aspiring photographer/artist from Melbourne, Australia. I embarked on a journey across North America on a 1100cc road touring “Hell” bike called “Mad Mavis” in 2009. With a budget half the size of a 12yr olds life savings, the trip was one shoestring-road-touring-adventure. Flying into San Francisco in early May 2009 I spent two weeks helping my brother prepare to set sail on the last leg of his own journey before making my way down to the coast of Texas, about 2hrs south-east of Houston, where I picked up the bike donated by Lee Winters. From there, the road took me anywhere and everywhere, whilst I traveled in a north-west direction to Alaska. The bike was the biggest I’d ever ridden, previous to which my riding experience was very limited to a few rides around the paddock on 250cc dirt bikes (or smaller) and Honda CB250’s at H.A.R.T’s rider training facility in Melbourne where I obtained my motorbike license two days before departing for the trip.
Plans to extend the trip from Texas, USA back to Melbourne, Australia via Alaska and Asia are currently on hiatus. This idea was hatched whilst hanging out with my brother, Nick on his sailing boat as I awaited flights to Texas to pick up the bike. There is no time frame within which to complete the trip at this stage.
I have a rather large soft spot for film after coming full-circle, shooting exclusively digital for over 2.5yrs from 2005. My intention was to document this trip using a medium format Pentax 6×7 and Pentax K1000. I shot mostly Velvia 100 slide and Agfa Neopan 400 or 800 120film, and Kodak Portra 160 VC 35mm neg. Two late additions to the camera bag, a pair of Canon AE-1 Program cameras both with 50mm 1.4f lens which I picked up in Las Vegas. I made a mounting bracket to attach the cameras to the bike in order to capture 3D stereoscopic images while I rode. I was unable to fully test this method with both cameras simultaneously, but instead captured 2D images while riding and also later mounted high powered headlights to facilitate riding at night.
Another aspect of the trip was to document my experiences in written form and publish to this site. For this purpose, I took a Brother EP-20 electric typewriter (circa 1982) and employed the power of a “Fax-to-Email” service which allowed me to fax pages from anywhere in the US to a special fax number, which then converted the fax to a .JPG and sent to me via email, then autonomously uploaded to this site. A small Eee PC was also later brought along to allow online editing and insertion of images.
I plan to have a solo show at a yet to be announced Melbourne gallery with works from this trip.
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