ooamerica: ooa's USA Road Trip

Happy holidays / Happy New Year, best wishes for all your resolutions and endeavors!

2013 promises to be an exciting year for ooamerica.com, with the final posts of the American Portraits series, the upcoming release of the movie / documentary, a fully revamped website, and a brand new adventure to another part of the world. More details soon and thanks for your support!

Seventh set of American ‘portraits’ featuring interviewees during the USA road-trip(s): two ‘regions,’ Deserts and Rockies, including people met in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

The following blurb of text is the same for other posts in this American portraits series, spare yourself the second read!

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These will serve as way of introduction for some of the interviewees featured in the movie and hopefully give viewers an idea of the demographics encountered – and through that shed light on the possible biases or commonalities in the selection of people met along the road, as well as their answers. Though I sought to interview a wide array of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds, I’m aware of some of the limitations or under-representations in the selection of people featured (ie: fewer women than men were willing to be interviewed on camera, and some ‘types’ of people such as public servants or perhaps more influential people are less likely to give an interview to a road-running stranger driving across the country in a white minivan – nobody should, really).

Why quote-unquote ‘portraits’?

I hadn’t set out to do a series of photo portraits (though I should have – and will correct this deficiency in future projects) so these were taken on the fly, ‘as a way to get the focus right’ in the seconds before a video interview. And most of these (due to forgetfulness at the time) are simply screenshots from the video interviews. All pictures were treated similarly in LightRoom using a unique adjustment of contrasting and sharpening so please excuse their coarseness – I suppose this is my guilt-felt excuse for the untailored esthetic of these shots.

Featured here, and special thanks to them (city corresponds to where I met them, not always where they’re from):

Deserts and Rockies:

-       Canadian biker, Meteor Crater NM, rides a Vulcan

-       Jennifer, Meteor Crater NM, drives cross-country for her job

-       Rocky, Fort Worth TX, cowboy

-       Tyler, Roswell NM, waiter

-       Deborah, Meeker CO, “Republicans are evil”

-       Derek, Dinosaur UT, truck driver

-       Don, Meeker CO, rancher

-       Itchy, Boulder CO, smiling on

-       Jessie, Ogden UT, “be grateful to your parents”

-       Merlin, Denver CO, book wizard

-       Nick, Boulder CO, skater

-       Rich, Dinosaur UT, Native American

-       Chris and Candice, Nederland CO, cosmically-bound

-       Robert, Dinosaur UT, truck driver

-       Spliffman, Boulder CO, rolling on

Happy 2013!