Lastest Posting
I have a 54cm Con Brio lugged road frame that’s been sitting in the corner of our “office” collecting dust and bumming me out because it should be out in the world getting used. Maybe it’s the Holiday Spirit or the potent homebrew I’m imbibing but I decided to take $400 off the asking price. There more info posted in the “for sale” pages.
Amber and I will be in Portland this weekend for the annual Portland Bazaar. Amber, of course, will have her Sketchbook bags on display and for sale. She’s also bringing along her Capricorn “Selavy” to fill out the booth, and I’ll be there to field questions, absorb compliments, and hopefully make myself known as one of the many local builders.
The Bazaar features the best locally produced or locally designed (some are made far away) products, all of which would round out most of your Christmas shopping nicely. There will be an assortment of Portland’s reknowned food carts and an impromptu cafe and lounge furnished by a local roaster and one of the show’s furniture makers. Should be a good time, come by and say “hi.”
My camera broke while I was on a bike ride the other day. It was in the side pocket of my bag when I hit a bump at 20-mph and I watched as it first landed on top of the bag, I reached for it as it sat there momentarily, but I wasn’t fast enough and was otherwise preoccupied with staying upright, and it slid off and fell to the pavement.
At a time when one is practically extpected to photograph everything for external validation not having the camera gives me a chance to pause and reflect on the consequences of living, posing, creating, and pausing for the shutter. Don’t get me wrong, I love taking pictures– I studied photography in school, and my sister was a professional photographer. But as digital photography evolved and became more and more ubiquitous our little cameras take a hold of the details of our daily lives and work, and cast them out into the world for the evaluation of others.
While I do what I can to take attractive, informative photos of my work and my world photography is not my art. Documentation is fine and important but as a collection of evidence it has a way of replacing the reality of a person, place, or thing. As little as five years ago I kept my favorite pictures, taken with my Mom’s 30-year old Canon FTb, in a photo album that I only shared on rare occaisions and with the people close to me. Many of those photographs I manually developed myself. When that camera stopped working I took it to a store that’s now a Dunn Bros. coffee shop and they replaced a spring and it worked again.
Photography now is more compulsory and impulsive. Especially now that I am in the business of making stuff and have a Flickr account I there’s an obligation I feel to keep contributing to the public’s demand for photographic proof. When I don’t post fresh pictures the website shows my numbers going down– the human reaction to that is to keep posting, to maintain the feeling that I’m doing something important.
Framebuilding as a process is pretty interesting, and the people interested in that process tend toward a fascination with it. It’s because of this that Flickr is lousy with my colleagues in the Coalition of Hammer and Torch, and why we update our pages as much as we tend to. After all it’s easy to get a few hundred people seeing your newest project while you get to spend the day working in blissful solitude. The result is like a drug though– immediate and thrilling. But ultimately the reality of each of the bikes that I build takes off from where I stop photographing them, when they’re out in the world with miles before and behind them, with smiling riders and spilling cameras.
Recently
December 8, 2011
Amber and I will be in Portland this weekend for the annual Portland Bazaar. Amber, of course, will have her Sketchbook bags on display and for sale. She's also bringing along her Capricorn "Selavy" to fill out the booth...
December 3, 2011
