Mailed the promos. Packed the car. Did a million things in between. Now it’s time to hit the road. There’s a good chance the blog will be quiet while I’m away. I’m available for freelance assignments while traveling. Here’s the schedule:

July 29-31: Andes, NY (Catskills)

July 31 – August 3: Martha’s Vineyard, MA

August 3-14: Camden, ME

August 14-16: Leicester, VT

August 17-23: Washington, DC

August 24-30: Adirondacks, NY

I leave you with four photographs created by Paul, a 2007/2008 A River Blue alum. Paul created these photographs during one of the assignments that I gave the ARB students. Fujifilm USA generously donated all of the instant film. I’m preparing these for a forthcoming exhibition and book… that’s all I can show and tell for now.

For a long time I did not consider myself very religious or spiritual but over time I have started to search for and find my own path. While browsing through the local Red Box I stumbled across Faith Like Potatoes, a movie based on having faith in all that surrounds you. I highly recommend it. For those that do not consider themselves spiritual or religious, I still recommend it! Make the story what you want it to be. There’s a good chance a poem that means something to me is going to mean something else to you, right?

In April 2008 Ethan and I were about to hit the road for Pause, to Begin, and the lease we had on the house we were renting was going to end pretty much the day we returned from being on the road. I needed to find a place to live and so I made a phone call about a listing I found in the classifieds. The landlord, Colin, wanted a 6-month lease, something I told him I couldn’t commit to, and he understood.

I thought that would be the end of our conversation but Colin paused for a moment and said I sounded like a good guy. He offered another place, a waterfront cottage, that I was welcome to rent out if I was able to find it. “Crazy,” I thought, “if I can find it?” He said it was very rustic. No bathroom. Dirt road. Not really finished on the inside. The only binding agreement was that if the place I sold I had to move out within a reasonable amount of time.

I made my way to the cottage on April 30th, 2008, and immediately fell in love. The video below is from that day.

While living there the hot water heater stopped working. I went to the studio where I worked while Colin and his guy came down to see what the problem was. I came home later that night and saw a post-in note on a photograph I had hanging on the wall. On it was written, “David, where did you take this picture? It is my home. Hot water should be working! Call me. — Colin”

Then I had that feeling where the hair on your arms stands up, the feeling that something unexplainable has just happened. I had photographed Colin’s home without knowing it and here it was hanging in his property that I was renting.

The cottage ended up selling and I was sad to see it go but happy for Colin to have the money. He said I was welcome to live in an even more rustic place on the opposite peninsula if I liked and that he would only charge for the cost of electric.

I visited the place, an old trailer on the water, and initially didn’t think I could live there. It was too rustic, too tough to mentally endure for months. But after much debate I decided it was worth it to save money to put towards Uganda.

Living there was very difficult but also beautiful.

The bed I slept in was surrounded by mosquito netting because of the spiders and mice. The only heat was from a small but strong wood stove that I didn’t keep running during the daytime for fear of burning down the trailer. When I came home from work at night the temperature inside the trailer would be whatever the outside temperature was, and many times it was well below freezing. I’d start a fire in the freezing cold and sit on my bed wearing my down jacket. We had bitter cold early winter storms and they slammed the trailer hard. The wind would blow so fiercely that snow would enter beneath my door. In the mornings there would be a small pile inside the door and I’d shovel it out. The electricity was so weak that if I plugged more than 2 things in the circuit would blow.

But it was somehow beautiful and I have many fond memories of living there. In many ways it made me appreciate so much and realize how simple life can be if we allow it. In the morning I would wake up, look out the bay window, and see lobster boats hauling in their traps from the tidal river, the Saint George. Two hundred feet away were 2 nesting bald eagles with an enormous nest that produced 2 hatchlings in the spring time. While walking next door in the morning to shower I would regularly see 10 wild turkeys. During sunsets the river would glow pinks, purples, and oranges. Countless times I would sit on the banks of the river and take it all in with awe, listening to the water rise and fall, the fog horns off in the distance.

Before I left for Uganda, I gave Colin the photograph of his home that I had hanging on my wall in the cottage as a way of saying thank you for letting me live in the trailer for 4-months free of charge (a savings of $2,000). He said he was going to hang it in one of the vacation condo’s he rents but later decided to keep it for he and his girlfriend and hung in their living room. In my mind I couldn’t have asked for it to have a better home.

You see, making my way to Uganda was serendipitous in a lot ways. I made sacrificies and worked hard to make it happen but I also had a lot of luck with great help from many friends along the way. In the end that made all the difference. Thank you!

Check out this show if you’re in the midcoast.

In 2005 I went to Costa Rica and Panama for 2 weeks with my father and brother. We spent 3 days in the Panamanian cloud forests. It was remarkable and remote… two traits I am a big fan of for photographing! Check out the work here: Guadalupe, Panama, 2005.

Here are two more pictures. The first is of the geodesic dome we slept in and the second is of my brother, dad, and I (left to right) outside the dome!  We took this crazy old Landrover up a stream to get to the location.

It was so cold the first night that my brother and I had to sleep in the same bed to keep warm. Do you think we rocked the “you sleep above the sheet / I sleep below the sheet and the blanket goes on top”? Of course!

I moved to Maine the day after I graduated college in May 2006. A good friend who was a year ahead of me in college, Kate Izor, went to Maine and liked it there. If it was good enough for her it was good enough for me, I thought. She and I were both right, but I give her all the credit. I’ll have to tell her next time I see her.

I started working at the Maine Photographs Workshops (now Maine Media Workshops) as the Digital Service Bureau Manager; fancy title. In reality I was responsible for running a usually flawless digital lab, making sure everything was as close to perfect as possible, and overseeing 3 wonderful employees, all of which became great friends.

The position was seasonal and I wanted to stay in Maine, so when John Paul Caponigro and his wife, Ardie, came to teach at the Workshops, I made sure everything was 100% flawless vs. the usual 99% flawless; gotta have the 1% to relax a little you know. I heard through a friend that they were looking for a part time employee and that they were great people, so he set up the interview which was really more of a “hey let’s meet you and make sure you mesh well with our team… and see if you can become acclimated to Angel, our enormous white German Shepard.” Usually I’m super allergic to dogs but somehow my body was able to tolerate Angel.

The day after I stopped working for the Workshops (10PM to be precise, but who’s counting..) in October 2006, it was at 3AM that I started working for JP! We braced for a wild ride up to Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park where he was teaching a Fall Foliage workshop and it was a big success, of course.

Fast forward two years to October 2008 after many Champagne Thursday’s, endless laughter mixed with (usually) mild debate over scotch (JP) and Jameson (me), photographs photography photographer, a million and one prints printed, snow storms, summer days, friends, family, and everything in between. It was at this time that I decided I wanted to leave the States, go to Africa, and help something, someone, anything. I said this to Ardie and what the hell she had a good friend, Chandler, who started and ran A River Blue, a non-profit based in Uganda. Well what the hell again, Chandler and I started emailing, and emails led to phone calls, and phone calls led to purchased tickets.

Rewind a little… it didn’t happen that fast but it sure felt like it.

Chandler and I started talking, and we both became serious about my going to Uganda. I sent countless emails a former volunteer, Beth, and asked her a million questions. Then I began a print sale and raised a good chunk of change (thank you to all who supported my journey — your kindness is unbelievable!) and two weeks before I left, I emailed Fujifilm USA to ask for a film donation. Times were tough (and still are) and I didn’t think I would get the donation, or at best not the amount I wanted.

A couple of days later I received an email back and all it said was, “LET ‘ER RIP!”. Are you serious? Exactly what I was thinking. Two days later I had the requested amount of instant color and b&w film for my students and I to use, and I packed it all into a Pelican case that Chandler gave me. Below is a picture I made of the students and I after using the film. Thank you, Fujifilm USA!

My coworker and seriously second mom, Diane, donated a Polaroid 100 Camera for the students to use and it’s a good thing she did because without it I would have been entirely screwed. I purchased a second camera off eBay but didn’t have time to test either before I left. No joke, Biggest mistake a photographer could make. Well, only Diane’s camera worked in Uganda!

I purchased my ticket two weeks before my departure, somehow lucked out and found a what I thought would be forever out-of-stock Canon 5D Mark II in-stock at RIT, bought a second battery which I thought would also be forever out-of-stock, borrowed JP’s Canon 45mm TS-E, and purchased (2) 8GB SanDisk cards and an extra tripod plate for my Gitzo. I literally finished packing right before my flight, boarded the airplane, and off I went.

Needless to say, I thought the journey ahead would be remarkable and life changing but I truly had no idea that it would be to the extent that it was.

David Wright Photography – Murchison Falls National Park – Uganda from djwright.

While traveling Uganda, I spent 3 days in Murchison Falls National Park. I had planned to go to the park with a public group but the tour company accidentally booked a private group for my departure day.

My travel window for seeing the park was super tight and thankfully the private group, a wonderful Danish family, were open to my traveling with them and we had a great time together. Pictured below is Morten, his 3 daughters, and our game warden walking towards a pool of hippos. See more of the photographs here!

Morten and his 3 daughters, Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda, 2009

During the coming weeks I’ll be writing about preparing for Uganda, making work in Uganda, editing the work together, preparing for the Chelsea Art Museum exhibit, and all that happened in between and afterward. I find the process quite fascinating and it’s my aim to make it useful and interesting for you.

Self-portrait, A River Blue, Uganda, 2009

Working on this now…

Elephants, Murchison Falls, Uganda, 2009