Showing posts with label cycling and photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cycling and photography. Show all posts

06 July 2018

Riding Every Linear Mile

One of the great things about cycling in my hometown of New York is that it allows me to see a lot of street art close-up.  My commute to work takes me through an industrial area of the Bronx where murals of one kind and another cover the walls of industrial buildings.  It's become such a part of the landscape that nobody, it seems, refers to it as "graffiti", a term that implies impermanence and echoes disdain.

I have also seen street art, or the art of industrial spaces, while pedaling through streets and along canals and railways (some disused) in other cities on both sides of the Atlantic.  I'm sure other cyclists have had their minds and senses similarly enriched in cities I have yet to visit.



Detroit is one of those places and Thomas Leeper is one of those cyclists.  Except that he claims he's "not really a bicyclist."  Whatever he chooses to call himself, he's ridden 2200 miles of The Motor City's streets during the past sixteen months for his passion project, Every Linear Mile.  



He's been photographing graffiti, murals and other kinds of art, including found-object-art, he's seen along the way.  His goal, he says, is to "give kudos" to folks who are "helping to beautify the city" with their work.  "Ninety-nine percent of it was created with no financial incentive in mind," he explains, so their efforts don't cost anything to the financially-strapped city.





Since he began the project, he's had 11 flat tires, stepped on seven nails, has had nine verbal offers of drugs and been chased by eight dogs.  "I've learned how to ride fast when I need to," he says, and keeps pepper spray on him, but "has never really felt unsafe."  


27 April 2012

Bike Backdrops

Arielle in Point Lookout, NY




As Velouria and others have noted, bicycling and photography seem to go hand-in-hand.  Cycling experiences, and bicycles themselves lend themselves very nicely to photo-imaging, for a variety of reasons.


Tosca in Weehawken, NJ




Now, for those of you who like to photograph bicycles, I have a question:  Do you have a favorite backdrop or "prop"?  I always seem to photograph my bikes by bodies of water.  That may have to do with the fact that I have rarely lived far from a large body of water, and so much of my riding is alongside, or a few pedalstrokes up- or down-wind of them.   Then again, I don't think that where I've lived and where I've ridden are accidents:  I have always had an attraction, if you will, to the sea,


Speaking of cycling and photography:  I'm having a very interesting experience that involves both.  I'll tell you more about it soon.