Ethiopia
As you can see the GPS on my site indicates I am back home from Africa and curled up in a blanket trying to breathe the cold air in Canada.
I took home a 500 gig hard drive full of gold. I have a journal full of names, notes, stories, beliefs. I have a stomach full of Mcdonald’s, because I ate nothing but rice and porridge for a month while in the bush of the Omo Valley in Ethiopia. I’ll never try to be ‘extreme’ or ‘grass roots’ living in a hut, I lay on my back every night thinking about sinking my teeth into some greesy fast food.
I spent two months in the country in total (I was in the North of the country adding to my Holy Men series after finishing in the tribal area). I made it home right before Christmas to my family in Ontario, Canada.
I will be releasing all the tribal photographs at once in a series with words, behind the scenes images and video. I think it’s my best work yet… I have put more thought, effort, stress, blood (and money!) into getting these images than anything else I’ve done. What matters is all that is over, and I have a pile of images with me now. The struggle is temporary but the pictures are around forever. (Or until my hard drive crashes… but it is all backed up several times over…)
Wish I could share the images as they come, but I feel this story is too special for that and needs to be released all at once in order to make sense.
I have to thank too many people, but I think the most would be my friend/ assistant Ryan. He literally got lost in jungles, climbed mountains, fought off tribal warriors, and ate the same disgusting food I did, except he was holding my big stupid light on a stick the whole time.
On some other notes-
Twilight
Thanks everyone for sending in their Twilight pictures. I missed to majority of my advertisements up on the street while living in the bush.
And special props to Cory Smith and Zach Hodges who went all out to make these tributes!!
Benjamin Bates- Forever Running
While I was away, Benjamin released his newest single Forever Running. I put a behind the scenes video online before I left, (check out the earlier blog post for more info). But now the real video is online and on television. If you live in Europe request the video on TMF! Check it out on youtube below.
