RUSH Drummer's 'Action Self-Portraits With Scenery'

RUSH drummer Neil Peart has posted a lengthy message on his web site consisting mostly of tales of his travels between shows on the band's current North American tour. An excerpt follows.

"From San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Los Angeles, California, April and early May carried me through seventeen shows and more than 7,000 miles of motorcycling. That journey quite literally stretched from the farthest Southeast to the farthest Southwest of the United States, and the scenery varied from tropical rainforest and Caribbean beaches to the Everglades, remote bayous, the lofty trees of the Deep South bearded with Spanish moss, the sage and mesquite rangeland of West Texas, the massive, eroded towers of Monument Valley, the cactus desert of southern Arizona, and the wide-open, creosote-dotted expanse of the high Mojave Desert, with its Joshua trees and the distant snowpeaks of the Sierra Nevada.

"These images are part of my latest series of experiments in travel photography, a collection titled 'Action Self-Portraits with Scenery'. While I ride along (on a straight and empty road, of course),I hold my camera out to the side, or over my head, and snap away. The technique yields many failures, and ongoing lessons in 'remote framing,' but occasionally it captures the desired effect the perspective of a helmeted rider passing through a backdrop of natural beauty.

"The idea evolved when my usual riding partner, Michael, was called away on other duties, and I rode alone for a few days. Without a model, or designated photographer, I was trying to figure out how to continue my attempt to document the combination of motorcycles and landscapes. Scenery alone doesn't seem nearly as interesting without a kinetic, human element, I don't think, and parking an empty bike in front of a landscape isn't very satisfying. Not wanting to fiddle with any kind of on-bike camera mount (especially after watching Brutus struggle to get one to work for the whole European run last October),I had to come up with something comparable to the 'Tip-Cam' I introduced for my cross-country skiing photos. Or like the method I made into a theme on my 'Ghost Rider' travels parking my old 1100GS in the middle of the road on its centerstand, with scenery all around, and the road ahead diminishing to its vanishing point.

Read the entire message at this location.