What’s in a Name? Origin Story of Riding The Edge.
When you’ve come across my YouTube channel or website, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought, “What is Riding The Edge and what does that have to do with photography?”
So today I thought I would tell the origin story of Riding The Edge Photo.
This video was made about four years ago but the story is still the same, just note that the website displayed in this video has been shortened a bit but is still Riding The Edge.
My story starts way back in 2007. At the time, I was working as a staff photographer for a daily newspaper, and every summer, myself and editor Steve Lundeberg would put together a series of some sort to run on a section front spread out through much of the summer. I did the photos, and Steve would write the stories and layout the pages. It was always fun to do these projects when things slowed down in the summer months.
Gearing up to go on assignment with an adventurous reporter while working as a staff photographer for the Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon.
It was about that time when both of us started riding motorcycles to work, and in one of our story idea brainstorming sessions, we came up with the idea to ride our motorcycles around the perimeter of our home state of Oregon. I think we were just looking for an excuse to ride our bikes more. It was a pretty basic plan: take a week, ride the perimeter of the state, tell stories of the people we met and of the places we explored on our adventure. We were calling the series, “On The Edge In Oregon.”To this day, I’m still surprised we got the go-ahead to do the project. I guess budgets weren’t as tight, and papers were more adventurous back then.
The series idea started out to be just the 2 of us, but about that time, my cousin Ed Patton got himself a motorcycle. He had heard of what we were planning and wanted to come along to help record some video for the project. So then there were 3. Well, one of our pressmen, Rick Matson, at the time was also riding a motorcycle to work, and when he got wind of the project, he just had to be a part of the adventure. So our crew was 4, which turned out to be a good number for the tour. The multi-part series chronicling our adventure ended up with a lot of reader interest. We received a lot of compliments on this project. Even many years later, I would get readers approaching me and thanking me for the adventure we took them on.
After On The Edge
The four of us enjoyed the experience of riding the perimeter of Oregon so much that the following year we decided to ride the perimeter of the state of Washington, just for the fun and for another adventure. It was about that time that I started a personal website I named “Riding The Edge.” It was meant to share photos and videos of our motorcycle adventures with friends and family. These motorcycle trips became an annual event; every year we would pick a new destination, making a route that would loop through a region. It became less about a specific state and more of an interesting route that would take a week to complete. We jokingly started calling ourselves the On The Edge Gang, riding to places every year like Death Valley, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Glacier, Mt. Rushmore. We covered 1000s of miles all over western US. The motorcycle was an amazing way to experience our country, giving me the memories of interesting people and places that I still cherish to this day.
Eventually, the motorcycle trips came to an end. I put almost 100,000 miles on my little Kawasaki motorcycle. I had basically road the wheels off that trusty bike. It served me well. At the time, I couldn’t afford to replace the motorcycle, so that was the end of my motorbike adventures, but that wasn’t the end of Riding The Edge, that was just the beginning of Riding The Edge Photography. I adopted the name for my photography business. All though I kept the name, It was no longer about motorcycles. Riding the Edge had a personal meaning for me, it had become a philosophy to the way I wanted to live my life. It’s about trying to stay out of the mainstream. It’s about not being comfortable and about taking the hard way, which is often the most rewarding way.
I came across an interview of photographer Galen Rowell, his work had influenced me a lot when I was starting my photography journey. In this interview he said “The edges of things in nature are the most beautiful, the edge of a continent next to the sea, the edge of a meadow next to a forest, and the edges of light where light tapers off into dark or different colors of light come together.”- Galen Rowell
I thought yes, that’s where I want to make my images, at the edges, and in a way I’m most passionate!
That gave my mantra validation, that’s where I want to be, I want to be Riding the Edge!
The last photo of the On The Edge In Oregon Project.