This one is, by necessity, going to run for a while. I shot 10 rolls of XP2 and 10 rolls of Provia 100f on the journey across USA from Chicago to Santa Monica - mostly down "Route 66".
For those who aren't familiar with Route 66, it used to stretch 2,448 miles from Jackson in Chicago to Santa Monica Boulevard in Santa Monica in California. It never ended at or on Santa Monica Pier - despite signs to the contrary. Down the years, the road (also known as The Mother Road and Will Rogers' Highway) underwent many re-routings and replacements as a result of the introduction of city bypasses and the creation of interstates - to the point where Route 66 no longer exists, as such.
Our trip wasn't so much an hommage to Route 66 as (a) we have no affinity with it and (b) it was a holiday intended to show us as much about the USA, its people, its culture and its geography. I would have loved to have spent hours with a tripod and my Hasselblad - but I know we wouldn't have made the journey in the time available. Therefore, the B&W shots were taken using my Nikon F3HP and my Nikon FE was used for the colour shots. I took 4 lenses (all manual focus Ai and Ai-S Nikkors) - 20mm/f2.8, 35mm/f2, 50mm/f1.2 and 85mm/f2.
What I'm going to post on here is, therefore, a series of snaps; a travelogue. It's not intended as some artistic statement about our journey. We had just two weeks to get from one end to the other and, by definition, most of the time was spent driving, eating and sleeping. That said, I do hope to have captured some of the flavour of what we saw.
Apologies for some of the crappy scans in this first set. These were done by the processing lab. I just wanted to get this kicked off. I will be re-scanning the negs to try to bring about a consistent look as I intend to produce a photo book to go on our bookshelf. Eventually....
