Last spring and summer I was working with Katie Spotz towards making a documentary about her plan to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. In May we filmed a series of interviews at and around her home in Mentor, Ohio, and we continued to seek financing for the project throughout the summer and into the fall. As her December departure drew near, we both realized that we lacked the resources (both time and money) to complete the project at a high level of quality; so we amicably parted ways.
Katie is currently several hundred miles off the coast of South America in her rowboat Liv, and it will only be a few weeks before she lands at her destination in Cayenne, French Guiana. She’s had a hugely successful journey so far, and it looks like she will finish her trip well ahead of schedule. You can follow her adventure here.
In anticipation of Katie’s arrival, I went back and dusted off some of the old footage we worked on together. I’d hate to see this content go to waste, and I’m also hopeful that I’ll be able to license some of this content to news outlets that want to tell Katie’s story. This short video reveals a bit about Katie’s anticipation of her journey as well as some of the tensions that emerged amongst her family as she pursued her unconventional dreams:
Just before my visit with Katie I spent two weeks touring the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, kayaking a handful of world-class whitewater runs. Part of my trip took me north into Canada where I got to boat three beautiful, wilderness rivers with John Alt, Pete Gehrels, and a few other good friends. John contacted me the other week asking to see some footage of a beating he took on the Cypress River on our first day out in Canada. Rather than just post the video to facebook, I thought I’d work it into more of a finished piece–a small preview of the extensive content from the North Shore that I will be producing with Rapid Transit in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more!
I’ve been delving into taxes this week, and my mind is feeling addled and burnt out from crunching numbers. So, I’m taking a break this morning to post a few photos I took in January. These were shot with my film camera using BW400CN, a film stock recommended by my friend Clark. Clark has been [...]
Last August, when Adam Goshorn offered me a spot on his winter Grand Canyon trip, I thought at the time there was no way I could swing it. The base cost of permits and travel combined with the extensive gear I would have to acquire loomed large. But the idea lodged in my mind, and [...]
Here are a couple of photos that I shot this past November while paddling the Green River with my friend Spencer:
This was my return to shooting film (Kodak 100NC in this case) after a few years hiatus in the digital realm, and I found it very refreshing. To me, shooting film has all the warmth [...]
I really enjoyed reading Rush Sturges’s recent account of his autumnal trip down the Middle Kings (check it here, http://theadrenalinerush.blogspot.com/2009/10/first-fall-middle-kings-descent.html), and I was inspired to do a photo blog about a trip we took down the Linville gorge this past Sunday. California may boast grueling, multi-day expeditions and 11,000-foot snowy passes, [...]
This Thursday, January 21st, Rapid Transit (a collective of kayaking film producers of which I am a member) will be hosting a premiere for our first DVD, The Eddy Feeling. The show will start at 9PM at the Cine in Athens, GA (http://www.athenscine.com/intro.php), and it is free (thanks to the UGA Whitewater Club!).
From my unabashedly biased [...]
Two nights ago I had a fascinating discussion with my friends Ruth and AJ. The conversation sprang from Ruth’s assertion that “Facebook is evil!,” a pronouncement I found interesting in light of my strong Facebook dependency. We three talked around the topics of Facebook, blogging, and internet socializing for over an hour, and by the [...]
