fun chunk of work here with yakima + the boys of weld a few months back. covered the sup + surf spots here in oregon with the weld team spread across the country on the rest of the footage.

can’t wait to see what’s next with this collaboration.

if you’re into film or into bikes or better yet into films about bikes then your film festival is coming up. next weekend here in beautifully soggy portland, oregon filmed by bike will be rocking the clinton street theater (+ the entire street in general). the opening night street party is gaining a reputation of fun + the thousands of bikes make for great community.

if you’re around for some of the flicks there’s a mix of short films + a few new longer inclusions this year as well. there will also be a filmmakers panel after two of the showings. i’ll be spewing on one of those after the sat 5pm showing so if you’re up for an earful drop by. actually, stoked to be on a panel with producer kevin sullivan.

Our Filmmaker Q+A sessions are powerful nights in the theater, an opportunity to get to know the creative minds behind some of Filmed by Bike’s favorite movies.

When the LCD Soundsystem remade the video for their song Drunk Girls, they chose to film it with a cadre of Portland bikers. The result is a gritty party video. Producer Kevin Sullivan will be on stage to discuss this piece, why they chose Portland, how they found the actors and how they developed the rough-and-tumble concept of an underground tall bike jousting bout.

this just in from an esteemed colleague of mine, athena, whom i’m sure you’ll be hearing about if you haven’t already. priceless email + i thought (with her permission) i’d share the pain we’ve all come across. some days are just harder then others.

“I’m in Thailand right now on my annual adventure. I met this Thai breakdance girl last night. I set up a meeting to photograph her. I was soooooo ssooo excited…stayed up all night thinking about it….”woke up” and scouted, planned, charged my batteries and bought her water….she was no show…I’m so sad…all my friends are laughing at me and my heart ache…I got stood up by a Thai girl and I will never she her again…she was so pretty and so talented…oh the photographic pain.”

if you need a push to keep going, here’s a nice take from edward norton appropriately titled innovators: you will feel the terror.

wired’s running a piece on skateistan that should get us all thinking. solid film work + undeniable subject matter. can any of us even imagine a childhood without freedom of fear? if only more visual media was put to such proper use.

one thing that keeps me charged on photography + filmmaking is the good that it can do + the access most of the public has to it. if you have an idea, if there’s a cause nearby then get out + support it. your skills can often do much more good then your money.

you can find more @ skateistan. or simply find a venue near you that needs your talent + time. help portrait is just around the corner.

wrapped up a week of being inspired last week with students pursuing their passion for photography with a talk i give called my better is better then your better. it’s based on the nike / w+k ads from a few years back. the idea being that we’re all around to (a) be in business + (b) be creative. pursue passion, work hard + take pride in what you do. we should all be able to say “my better is better then your better” in some way, be it simply expressing our personal point of view or dominating what you do best. it’s not a put down towards others as much as it is a statement of belief in your self, your work + perhaps most importantly your efforts.

reading courtesy of ibooks on my flight home i was then caught by this piece off change this titled The Power of Passionate Creatives. the one thing among many that stood out for me was this,

Passion puts you ahead of the competition.

An interesting thing happens when we pursue our passions as our profession: We actually seek out more challenges. Rather than viewing them as sources of stress, we see them as opportunities to get better faster.
We want to push ourselves to the next level, and we get restless if we remain in the same place too long.
No matter what the area of work, some people are quite passionate about what they do. They can’t wait to get to work and test themselves. They love to drive their performance to new levels.
Increasingly, these are the people you will be competing with in the future.
We’ll say this a different way:
If you are not equally passionate about the work you do, you will undoubtedly get marginalized. The pressures will just be too overwhelming.

brilliant. kind of thing you intrinsically develop as a creative business owner but never put into place as an advantage. my better is better… in crazy synchronicity the piece even touches on my current book Matt Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft where he argues that working with one’s hands can have deeply philosophical, even spiritual, meaning. if you haven’t, you should.

so here’s to creativity coming out your ears. this mind blowing trailer from life cycles, might help. it’s the best thing i’ve seen lately. pure inspiration. an ex pro rider friend relayed to me,

Holy ?!@#, I believe the standards for bike movies just went up a notch. Looks like a National Geo documentary merged with The Collective. Super rad.