Photos from wandering a spice market. Testing new colors for Litely 2 – coming soon.

I’ve never really considered riding a motorcycle. In fact, the first thing that comes to mind is that rather mean-looking, cigar-smoking antihero from “Raising Arizona.” (see Exhibit A.) It came up recently, however, with a phone call from Harley-Davidson.

It was lunchtime, and I was standing in a Whole Foods parking lot, when they said the words, “We like your work. We want to give you a bike and teach you how to ride.”

They went on to explain how they were trying out a new program where they invite interesting people from different walks of life to learn how to ride. We’d be put through a motorcycle boot camp of sorts, and Rider’s Edge (where we actually learn), and we’d each get our own custom bike, all for just sharing what the experience is like through the usual social media channels. Woah.

Now, if you’re familiar with bikes, that probably sounds awesome as all hell, but for someone like me, it’s a bit like hearing how NASA is recruiting a few people to learn how to fly space ships – something totally bad ass, but foreign, scary, and completely out-of-character. Which is why I said, “yes.” And as a friend who rides put it, it’s somewhere between driving a car and flying a plane, which to my mind, makes perfect sense to try.

Then I had a chance to meet the incredible people I’d be learning to ride with. The UFC fighter Mike Chiesa, the illustrator Ray Frenden, the prolific musician Astronautalis, and the pro-skater Greg Lutzka. Crazy bad-ass, independent people with such a refreshingly rare humility that if you weren’t immediately familiar with who they were, a quick Google search would make you shrink in your seat while saying “Oh… THAT guy.”

As the dude who just takes pictures, I feel completely honored to get to know them over the next few months, and super excited to share this new experience with you. Wish me luck.

Evan Lane + Kayla Varley in the Venice studio. Messing with presets in Lightroom.

Screw megapixels. Apple’s done a fantastic job. These are raw photos taken with HDR enabled. Between the depth of field & awesome color representation, i’m really, really digging the new camera. You can also really feel the 40% bump in snappiness. Stay tuned for a more in depth camera test this weekend from Kings Canyon National Park.

(Side note, there’s a drunk man in the first photo, and i have no idea who’s dog this is.)

Gearing up for a new phone? Here’s the result of some late night experimentation, layering space photos from Nasa’s SDO, Hubble & Cassini missions to re-create the star from one of my favorite sci-fi films, Solaris. (If you haven’t seen it, the soundtrack alone is enough to make you swoon.)

The image is comprised of photos of Saturn’s moon Titan, a Dopplergram of our sun, a few eclipse shots & supernovas, and some CG magic to create the wisps of charged particles.

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