I love road trips. I especially love solo road trips. Just me and the open road. Audiobooks, real books, music and wandering. Quite simply, there is nothing i’d rather do.

Road trips give me time to reflect, to roam and play. Over the years, the adventures I've enjoyed most are the ones i’ve planned the least. I’ve learned that it’s so important to give yourself room to listen to your intuition and change course or stay put whenever the moment strikes.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition”

— Albert Einstein

One of the reasons I’ve always loved road trips is that it gives me the opportunity to step out of my daily life. This gives me the much needed clarity that gets lost when I’m knee deep-deep in the thick of it at the studio. Doing this gives me the opportunity to assess how things are going in life and if I have the right priorities, values, goals, etc..

So with that being said, here's a little tribute to the open road!

Death Valley, California

Mojave Desert, California

The Yukon, Canada

Northern British Columbia

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

Banff, Alberta

Jasper, Alberta

Ireland

Texas

Salt Flats, Utah

This past October, I set out to photograph something that has been top of mind lately - Time. That 'essential' thing 'invisible to the eye.' What I I love about photography is the ability to capture what the eye can’t see. In this case, the passage of time was my focus. I came home with this 8 image series titled 'New Found Tide.' With ‘tide' representing both the ocean and the Old English use of the word - relating to time.

To slow everything down and shoot in a more deliberate way.

I wanted to shoot this series because of a strong desire to slow things down and reflect. My personal and professional life is great and I have little to complain about. But with a one year old daughter, another baby on the way, along with aging parents, time and it’s scarcity is something that’s been at the forefront of my thoughts for a while now. I’ve been an extremely ‘busy’ person for many years now and that’s something i’ve always taken a lot of pride in. However, I’m now at a point now where i’m starting to question the value of always being so busy. Often there is a feeling of needing more time, or a sense of frustration at the realization that there just isn’t enough time to do all the things I want to do. This is why I felt it was important for me to shoot this series - I wanted to slow everything down and just sit, observe the tide, and shoot in a more deliberate way.

A quiet, meditative series exploring the passage of time.

I decided to shoot off the coast of Newfoundland because I had been there once before and recall staring out at the ocean and feeling as if I was standing at one of the four corners of the world. My intention was to create a quiet, meditative series exploring the passage of time. Knowing myself, I figured I would have difficulty resisting the urge to instantly review images once exposures were complete. So I shot film, and this provided the delayed gratification that felt appropriate for this project. The shoot process was slow and deliberate with exposure times varying from 1 minute to 1 hour. Just sitting there, simply being, while the film was being exposed was important because I was forced to truly take in the scene. The sights, sounds, the smell, the feeling of the cold ground and the unrelenting ocean wind blowing in my face. I did this for a week - 6am to 6pm and it was wonderful. The photographs in this series were all shot in Placentia Bay - an area approximately 100km wide about an hour and half drive from St. John's.

Anyways, I do hope you enjoy this series.

For those interested - there is a limited set of prints available. You can check them out here.

With Gratitude,

Ryan Szulc