Outdoor Visions Blog

US road trip, part VI – Happy Campers

Published: 15/05/2013 by Lars

A few days ago, we returned home after traveling the US Southwest for two months with an old VW camper van. Those of you who follow this blog frequently know, all others feel free to check out the five previous posts regarding that journey down below.

We are known as adventure-sports, lifestyle and landscape photographers and those subjects are what we mostly love to shoot, but on this trip we started a personal project that went somewhere completely different.

Staying on so many campgrounds along the way, we quickly noticed the huge variety of vehicles – gigantic motorhomes, tiny caravans, slide-in campers, vans, busses, some dating back to the sixties, some fresh from last year. Quite different to the scene here in Germany. And the owners of those vehicles were mostly equally as interesting. So whenever we had parked our VW on a campground, we went for a walk and looked around for subjects to shoot.

When we look back at this project now, it was something, that made this whole journey even more special. We got to know so many nice people and heard so many great stories and just had a good time chatting about this and that. Everyone of them had a good story to tell. We really cherish those times and can’t wait to continue this project when we go back to the US …

P.S.: All portraits were taken with a Hasselblad H4D-50 and the HC 3,5/50 mm lens.

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Posted in California, happy campers, Hasselblad, on the road, personal work, portraits, USA | Verschlagwortet mit Arizona, California, campers, caravan, motorhome, portrait, roadtrip, USA, Utah | Kommentare deaktiviert

US road trip, part V – Earth Day 2013

Published: 27/04/2013 by Lars

In almost 200 countries around the world, April 22nd is celebrated as Earth Day to raise awareness and support for the importance of environmental protection. As we are on the road and our web-connection is not always good enough to feed this blog, this post comes a few days late, but still is really important to us.

These past weeks have brought us to some amazing places in the US southwest. Places with breathtaking scenery and true natural beauty. We saw landscapes that everybody should see and know of, to be aware of the importance of taking the right actions in life to protect this planet, its natural resources and wilderness areas. Especially as we have seen many things lately that will sooner or later kill this planet.

So here is what we, as photographers, might be able to do, to help raise that awareness: show you these landscapes through our photos, in honor of Earth Day.

For those of you interested: all these images were taken with a Hasselblad H4D-50.

Posted in landscapes, on the road, personal work, USA | Hinterlasse einen Kommentar

US road trip, part IV – a few days with F-Stop Gear

Published: 18/04/2013 by Lars

A few days ago, Katrin, Fietje and I were in Bryce Canyon in Utah and met up with two great guys, Cameron Sylvester and Jon Thorpe. Cameron is the team videographer of F-Stop Gear and Jon a freelace photographer from Canada, who is on a five-month roadtrip in a VW-Bus himself.

For those of you, who don’t know F-Stop Gear – this should definitely change. They are manufacturers of great camera backpacks and bags and while they are also doing urban style products, they are producing the best packs suited for adventure and mountain sports photographers. I use the Guru and Tilopa BC backpacks but they have more models available. Check their complete Mountain Series here.

F-Stop started a really cool project, called Life in Focus. In a series of films they are portraying members of their staff pro photographers team and the amazing projects they are pursuing. So after finding out about our family-photography trip and the longterm-project behind it, they asked us to be part of it. That’s how we ended up meeting Cameron and Jon.

For two days they followed us around to capture the lifestyle of a family living out of the few square feet our ’71 Westfalia bus is offering, and to see how we combined the family and baby-life with working as adventure and landscape photographers. And while Cameron was filming us, Jon was always around as well, taking still images. It almost felt, like we were famous …

We had a great time together and it was special to meet these two very talented guys. The following images were all taken by Jon, the video part from Cameron will follow on the F-Stop website and on this blog later this summer.

And don’t forget to check out Jon’s blog about his big roadtrip through the US as well. He has some cool photos on there and stories to share. Plus, his 1987 VW Synchro Bus is a really sweet ride as well. All it’s power comes from a solar panel on the roof and Jon has so much of it, that he even let me load one of my Hasselblad batteries over night. (Thanks again, Jon !!!)

Posted in on the road, personal, roadtrip, USA | 2 Kommentare

US road trip, part III

Published: 10/04/2013 by Lars

It has been a bit over four weeks now since we left Hamburg in snow and ice and that we have been cruising and exploring the Californian desert. After our stop in the Alabama Hills on the east side of the Sierra Nevada we drove our 1971 bus into Death Valley. We stayed for about a week, got used to the heat and the dry air and to taking it easy long parts of the day and going on hikes, running and capturing those moments on camera in the evening and morning hours when the temperatures are nice.

After Death Valley we drove on to Anza Borrego State Park, which is situated close to the Mexican border and is the nations biggest state park. Most of it is unfortunately only accessible by 4×4 vehicles, but we did some nice hikes and Katrin drove us out to Fonts Point for some landscape photos on a very sandy road without getting stuck.

Then we visited Joshua Tree Nationalpark. We’ve been there on a previous trip but we like the area a lot so couldn’t miss it this time either. The landscape is really interesting with all those Joshua Trees on a high plateau in the desert and lots of rocks in all kind of shapes and sizes lying around everywhere.

Our bus is still running smooth, but also a bit safer now. We have had problems with the breaks right from the beginning on and finally went into a garage for European cars in San Bernadino near L.A. They were really nice and extremely helpful and found that we were only breaking with the back breaks. In the front the brake pads were basically non existing anymore and the tube to the brake booster was plugged and leaking. That explained everything. So now all is good. It did cost us about 1.000 US$ to have it all fixed but it feels so much better and safer now.

Not only in this garage in San Bernadino but overall we have met so many wonderful and helpful people on this trip, it is great. Maybe it is the old bus, maybe it is our baby boy Fietje, but wherever we go and talk to people, we get nice comments, hear good stories and are offered help, wine or hamburgers. And even if it’s not the most comfortable way of traveling like this: we wouldn’t want to change it a bit.

After briefly touching Nevada and Arizona, we have now arrived in southern Utah and are ready to go to Bryce Canyon Nationalpark tomorrow. The crazy thing is: after four weeks of pure sunshine and temperatures between 20° and 30° celcius everyday, it started snowing yesterday and temperatures have dropped down to around 0° degrees. We’ll see, for how long we’ll enjoy that. The good thing is, we are free in all our plans and the heat is waiting only a few hundred kilometers south of us.

We’ll keep you posted on what we’ll do. Come back here for more news or check our facebook page now and then.