I get around by bicycle. Most of my riding is utilitarian, ’round town stuff, but when I was younger, I biked all over the United States.
While I was out on the road, my carrying space was limited. So was my strength. Which meant that I was forced to take a minimalist approach to photography. I carried one Nikon FM body with a wide angle or normal lens, and that was it. No flash, no tripod, no laptop. All of those things would have added extra weight.
My travels taught me to make do with what I had, and that’s a philosophy I carry into photography’s digital era. For lack of a better name, let’s call it Bike-tography.
Yesterday proved to be a good Bike-tography day, so I took the camera along as I rode around town on errands. One of them was to the bank’s 24-hour deposit box, which is on the other side of this building. Architectural photography isn’t on my usual to-do list, but what the heck…
Then it was on to other exotic destinations like the drug store. Nothing to photograph there, but there was this really cool construction site a few blocks away. Or, should I say, it was a destruction site, because it was full of rubble from a recently demolished building.
There was no fence between me and the rubble, so I parked off the bike and got down to business…
One of the great mysteries of solo Bike-tography is how you capture yourself on film — or pixels — if no else is around to do the honors. Well, I’m here to tell you that it can be done. You just use your bike’s rearview mirror as a photographer’s assistant:
