i thought it was great timing to show you the work of Ren Rox since Flickr has just been given a design update (and everyone gets 1 terabyte free storage, which is pretty cool). so now you can browse her work with lovely big pictures and endless scrolling – the way all photostreams should be viewed.
her photography has appeared in The Face, Lula, Dazed & Confused, Oyster, NME and many more publications. see more of Ren’s work at her website, flickr & tumblr.
all photos by Ren Rox
i am a huge fan of Heidi Swanson’s amazing food blog 101 Cookbooks - and i’m sure you are too – but i only recently discovered her beautiful photography (other than her food photography, of course). she is a super talented lady, with a new york times bestselling cookbook and wonderfully curated online shop Quitokeeto. check out more of her photos at flickr.
all photos by Heidi Swanson
i was catching up on emails this morning after our internet-less weekend away and a wonderful letter from Anna Fusco was just so awesomely serendipitous & co-incidental, as i had literally just read this book and listened to this podcast.
both are stories of people who one day decided to hit the road and leave their ordinary lives behind – whether it was to go on a quest, or for no particular reason at all but to experience the open road… Anna & Nate are on the same path, having bought a thirty year old camper van and setting off on April 1st “with nothing but our cameras, our dog, the books we couldn’t bear to leave behind, and a new sleeping bag courtesy of my mother.”
Since then, we’ve been traveling the U.S. without a calendar or a particular destination, living off of canned beans and tortilla chips. I’ve been religiously documenting every step of my wanderlust, the beauty and the breakdowns. Trust me that the van isn’t the only thing having an occasional meltdown. But that’s life, that’s van life, and I like it.
Everywhere we stop, people tell us they wish they could do what we do. I want people, women especially, to know that they CAN live in their VW campers and eat their cake too. I say women in particular because for some time it appeared to me that this was a seemingly male dominated “lifestyle,” attainable only by ex-professionals turned religious surfers (i.e. Foster Huntington, another big inspiration) – not by shrimpy twenty-something city girls too attached to their Swedish Hasbeens to “rough it” and too afraid of big waves to surf.
be sure to follow their adventures at Anna’s blog Dama and Dig. all photos by Anna Fusco.
i love anything to do with cowgirls, so it was a treat looking through this recent New York Times feature about cowgirls of today who grow up in the ranch country of the Texas Panhandle. some of these girls appear quite tough (and i bet they are!) but then you spot the inconspicuous braid in their horse’s mane. photographer Ilona Szwarc is known for her series about American Girls, which you can see on her website.
When talking about rodeoing, the girls muse about their spiritual connection to the animals and the grit the sport helps them build — rather than the fact that they’re crossing over into traditionally male territory. “I used to be scared a lot, to even get on a horse,” Riley Sessions, 12, says. “I got tougher as I got on a horse and started riding. You’ve got to be pretty brave to ride a horse.” – Julie Bosman
i really love the idea behind 12 hrs, a new travel site launched by The Locals photographer Søren Jepsen and writer Anna Peuckert. much like my own city guide to Cape Town, they aim to give you tips “that aren’t about money, but about great discoveries from all around the world.” i wish i could have had their guide to Copenhagen handy when i visited there in 2007, now guess i can add another reason to go again.
We love to travel. We also love design, and music, and fashion. And we were missing a website full of travel tips for people like us. Somewhere between the backpackers and the luxury hotels. To keep it simple, we organized them in itineraries. 12 hours per trip. Sweet and short. With the best to see, do, eat, dance we could fit in one short stay.
all photos by 12 hrs
