simonweller

[simonweller]

To mark the publication of my new website today I wanted to repost my takeover of Colour Services Instagram account a couple of years ago. While I was living in California Color Services became my trusted pro photo lab for 35mm and 120 film processing. Check them out at colorservices.com 

Colour Services Instagram Takeover. Day 1. 

I've decided to kick things off with a photograph from 2001. Early that year I left my 9 to 5 life in London working as a cover designer for Penguin Books and spent 8 months driving across the United States in an old Cadillac. My passion for photography began on a West Coast roadtrip in 1996 and after that I spent years planning and saving for the dream drive. I flew to Florida and bought a beast of a car from an old lady in Miami who looked like one of the Golden Girls. With a camera in hand and all that I owned in the trunk of my car I departed from the Florida Keys and ended up in Seattle 18,000 miles later (I didn't take the most direct of routes!) My experiences that year helped to lay the foundations for my photographic career. Over the next week I'm going to share photographs & stories from my years on the road in Africa, Asia, Europe & North America.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 1. 

My education in graphic design and early career as a book cover designer continue to be an influence on my photography to this day. I'm obsessed with signs & typography, especially classic Americana and anything hand painted. This shot was taken during a journey across Alaska in 2008.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 1. 

This shot was taken during a camping trip to the Black Rock Desert, Nevada in the late Spring of 2012. This area is very close to the site of Black Rock City, the dried lakebed where Burningman takes place every year. Having been to BM in 2001 and 2005 I must say that I prefer to visit 'off season' away from the crowds. I think the Nevada Desert is one of the most beautiful and underrated parts of the West.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 1.

One more shot for today. Here's a view of Los Angeles from the Griffith Observatory on a rainy day last year. I think it was the first time I'd ever seen LA like this and the storm clouds gave the city an apocalyptic feeling.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 2. 

Between 2002 and 2005 I was based in London, trying to make it as a freelance photographer. During this time I continued to design book covers to pay the rent. In 2004/05 I had a great run of photo commissions including shoots for Toyota, Channel 4 Television, Independiente Records and Wired magazine. I used the money from these jobs to fund two six month trips to California. During this time I wanted to get better at photographing people and had a plan. I would photograph unsigned bands and musicians (usually my friends) for free in exchange for having control of the shoot ideas and locations. This worked brilliantly for me (and hopefully them) and I was able to build a large body of new work.

This photograph from 2006 is of Mark, the singer & guitarist of a punk band in Northern California. At the time of the shoot Mark was working at a large freight train yard and we arranged to meet there. I assumed he had got permission for us to take photographs in the yard but that wasn't the case. We spent an hour or two sneaking around attempting to avoid the 'Bulls', the fearsome train cops who patrol looking for vagrants trying to hitch a free ride. At one point we had to hide in an open box car as a patrol car passed by. I remember crawling under a stationary train car to get this shot of Mark, as trains on other tracks were being moved. As I crawled a most terrifying booming sound of train cars colliding together echoed around the yard. Mark shouted "Keep your head down if you don't want to get decapitated". With that advice in mind I made it out of there in one piece.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 2.

During the summer of 2006 I made a number of photo trips to Reno, Nevada. This shoot was of singer / songwriter Lee Bob Watson, a close friend of mine and a very talented musician. That afternoon we had a lot of fun wandering the seedy backstreets of 'The Biggest Little City in the World' as the sun went down. We were constantly harassed by folk down on their luck but Lee Bob would always find the time to stop and chat or serenade them with his guitar. www.leebob.com

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 2.

Here’s another shot from Reno in 2006, this time of my friend James Parrish, a singer. We discussed trying to shoot images that looked like film stills, going for a Midnight Cowboy meets Fight Club feel. I used a compact camera, small tripod and available light. This is what I like to call guerrilla photography - using the minimum amount of gear, shooting quickly and using multiple locations without permission. It doesn't always work to plan but it did here.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 2.

This shot of the band Two Sheds was taken back in 2006 in Sacramento, California. Husband and wife John & Caitlin Gutenberger were more than up for the challenge of finding random locations around their home city. Our last stop of the shoot was late at night at this wonderful old laundromat in a rough part of town. Seconds after I took this shot we were interrupted by the half blind elderly owner bursting in and screaming at us "Get off! You’re going to break my machines!!" We apologized, left swiftly and then collapsed in a fit of the giggles outside. www.ilovetwosheds.com

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 3. London To Hong Kong By Train.

In early 2008 I took the most challenging journey of my life, traveling overland from London to Hong Kong by train. My route took me almost two months through Belgium, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Siberia, Mongolia and China. I'd wanted to experience the Trans-Siberian railway for many years and had talked with my youngest brother Andy about going to Lake Baikal in Siberia together someday. In late 2007 my world fell apart when Andy died suddenly at the age of only 31. The idea of taking this trip took on a new significance and seemed the perfect tribute to him. It also became a way for me to face up to the huge loss. I tell you this story only because I think it really explains the sombre and sometimes bleak mood of my photographs. This shot was taken somewhere in Belarus as the train approached the Russian border. Over the next two days I'm going to post photos and stories from this journey through eight time zones.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 3. Russia.

I first visited Saint Petersburg in 1990 during an art school trip to Russia. Back then, as the USSR broke apart, the city was still known as Leningrad. It was really fascinating to return years later to what felt like a completely different country. Once empty shopping arcades on Nevsky Prospect were now filled with Gucci, Prada and Versace boutiques. However, in amongst these examples of the new prosperity were many glimpses of the old Russia I had remembered. Here was a man selling military hats to tourists out of the back of his rusting old Lada car. He didn't get my business though as I had bought one from a soldier at a checkpoint almost two decades before - he took it off his head and exchanged it for my US Dollars.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 3. Russia.

I have very few shots of people from this journey, mainly due to the language barrier and my own feelings of isolation. One person I did connect with was Sasha, a 19 year old girl on my train departing from Saint Petersburg. She was heading for Moscow to visit her boyfriend for the weekend. We sat next to each other for 8 hours, exchanging lessons in our respective languages. Every so often she would disappear to the end of the train carriage to smoke and as we approached Moscow I asked if I could take some photos of her. She agreed but probably thought it a little odd. I regret not emailing her the photo while I still had an address.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 3. Russia.

This is my friend Kira's Mum's apartment in a Soviet era high rise tower block in the suburbs of Moscow. I'm fairly sure this was the original decor.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 3. Trans-Siberia.

The Trans Siberian Railway, often mistakenly referred to as the Trans Siberian Express is far from fast. The train takes its time on the 5,592 mile journey from Moscow in European Russia into NE Asia and the frozen tundra of Siberia, across the vast Gobi Desert in Mongolia before ending in the Chinese capital, Beijing. If you stayed on the train for the entire journey it would take a week. This journey is often listed as the Trans-Mongolian service, while the classic Trans Siberian route terminates in the port city of Vladivostok.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 4. Trans-Siberia.

Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest lake in the world. It reaches a depth of 5,387ft, is 395 miles long, 49 miles wide and contains 20 percent of our planet's freshwater. During the winter the lake becomes a frozen highway, bypassing the narrow, winding and often very congested roads along the shoreline. As spring approaches the ice begins to thaw but many drivers still choose to take this route across the lake. Every year a number of drivers die as the ice breaks under the weight of their vehicles. It is really quite something to see a fully laden semi truck driving across a frozen lake and even more astonishing to witness the aftermath of one of these accidents during the thaw. One day I took a drive out onto the lake with a local guide. As we drove across the ice he suddenly stopped the car, jumped out and started drilling a hole with a tool usually used for ice fishing. He called me over, gesturing for me to look into the hole. There before my eyes was a large truck, fully submerged just below the surface, the cab pointing up towards the sky. I could barely believe what I was seeing. "Is the driver ok?" I asked. My guide replied "The driver is maybe ok." I wasn't convinced.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 4. Trans-Siberia.

This was the kitchen of my guesthouse in Listvyanka on the South Western shore of Lake Baikal, Siberia. The room was a perfect spot to have breakfast, bathed in the most beautiful early morning winter light.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 4. Trans-Siberia.

The town of Port Baikal was once a bustling railroad terminus of the Circumbaikal Railway. After the main route to the Siberian city of Irkutsk was diverted south of the lake the town fell on hard times. When I visited it felt like a ghost town, with dozens of dilapidated old cabins and the rusting remnants of an industrial past.

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Color Services Instagram Takeover. Day 4. Trans-Siberia.

Port Baikal, Siberia. According to my guide this was the town's nightclub. He assured me that it was quite the happening venue but I sadly didn't get to find out.