Life has many paths. Which line will you take?

Is it worth making sacrifices to become a world-class professional rider, or is it better to ride motorcycles for pure enjoyment?



Created by Traction eRag and Motojournalism.

The creators of Fifty Years of Kicks bring you Checkpoints, a new motorcycle documentary about living a life devoted to off-road riding. We check in with five riders, ranging from 15 to 75 years old.

Featuring:
Graham Jarvis (age 40) - Red Bull Hard Enduro champion
Colton Haaker (age 25) - Maxxis FIM SuperEnduro champion
Paul Rodden (age 75) - 50 years of competition and trail riding
Larry Murray (age 65) - former Can-Am and Husqvarna Enduro rider
Jamie Baskerville (age 15) - Beta-supported GNCC racer

The 40-minute documentary will be distributed for free on YouTube. The release date will be April 28th, 2016, at 6PM EST.

The documentary was filmed in August 2015 in Mattawa, Ontario, Canada, on the Voyageur Multi-Use Trail System (VMUTS). Five riders from around the globe were assembled to discuss living an off-road lifestyle.

What are the first steps in becoming a professional rider? What aspects of "normal life" do you have to give up in pursuing that goal? How do you remain on the podium when you are 40 years old? Can it always be fun? These are some of the questions posed in the film and addressed by a group of men who have focused their lives on dirtbikes.

Funded by our fans with Kickstarter.

Sponsored by: Ontario Tourism, Husqvarna Motorcycles, Beta Motorcycles, What a Ride, Canada Rides, TekVest, and Bytown Motorcycle Association.

So much news coming soon, Just wrapped shooting the Fifty Years of Kicks sequel with Paul, Larry, Graham Jarvis, Colton Haaker and Jamie Baskerville. The day we finished I got a message saying the original documentary was chosen as an official selection for the Motorcycle Film Festival in Brooklyn! What a week!

Holy smokes, there might be a sequel to our motorcycle documentary Fifty Years of Kicks! Check out the video below to get an idea of what it's all about: Motorcycle documentary - Fifty Years of Kicks sequel

A few clips from a recent cross-Canada jaunt. Shot with the GoPro Hero3, the Nikon D600,  and a Konova camera slider.

Prairies

Vancouver Island

I've been busy wrenching on the sidewalk the past few weeks - scheduled to head to BC from Montreal tomorrow, off to visit family and figured I'd make a trip out of it.

I'm due to leave tomorrow, so of course right now the bike is completely apart while I sort out last-minute LED lighting

The state of the KLR earlier this year:


Black plastic = handguard fairings and "Wheat Whacker" fairing mod:

The forks are off for an install of progressive springs and an Eagle Mike fork brace along with an Acerbis supermoto fender.



I'm also trying out 8" Odyssey II Jesse luggage  - I want to carry my DSLR video equipment to capture some epic Canadian landscapes and hopefully a story or two...

The KLR is in Cross-Canada mode.


I'll be updating in real-time with photos on Twitter - you don't even need an account to follow along.

Keep an eye on twitter.com/motojournalism for the latest.

See you on the road!

Well, I know I'm late to the party - the last few years have seen smartphones change the way we produce and consume photography. There's no question that it's possible to create fantastic imagery with a smartphone. 

I was very lucky to be invited to Switzerland for three weeks in August - and while it wasn't explicitly a motorcycle trip, there was plenty to photograph from a motorcyclists perspective.


I was able to get a couple day's worth of riding and photographing on a borrowed motorcycle, and boy did it make me appreciate my luggage setup on my own KLR650! More on that later...

Here are a few of the photographs, a sneak preview.


I had no idea that the Swiss made motorcycles. Here is a gorgeous 1934 Condor 850 sidecar.




















Love the "motorcycle" icon on Switzerland's road signs.






Vintage Husqvarna, vintage gear, vintage sideburns! This guy was racing with the modern enduro bikes.



My girlfriend's grandfather checking out a Moto Guzzi at what looks to be an auction or motorcycle show.




Somehow the Swiss license plate just looks right on this Steve McQueen edition Triumph Bonneville T100...



















I was lucky to be loaned this BMW Ündersteer 1200. Not built for the Swiss twisties! I sure was happy to be on a bike though!

I was stoked to hear that the Wilkinson bros. over at the Good Spark Garage posted a review of the Motojournalism photography ebooks.




There are many good blogs these days featuring the latest motorcycle builds, but the Wilkinson brothers dig deeper than most into the history, the people and the beauty of motorcycling.

“Men do not quit playing because they grow old, they grow old because they quit playing.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes



Fifty Years of Kicks is a 20 minute video documentary featuring Paul Rodden (right) and Larry Murray (left); two experienced motorcycle riders who continue to do what they love despite age and health issues.

Fifty Years of Kicks, is a collaboration between Motojournalism.com and Traction off-road e-rag.
We've seen too many videos with teenagers doing double backflips, so with Fifty Years of Kicks, we wanted to show older adults pushing their bodies to the limit. We were tired of saying, “I wish I could have tried that when I was young”, we wanted to say, “I want to be like them when I grow up!”

We would like to continue to produce episodes profiling other interesting characters in motorcycling and are looking for sponsors to make that possible. We want to tell the stories of the people who participate, the reasons why these people engage in a sport with inherent risks and dangers, and why they can’t live without these two wheeled machines.

Enjoy the show!

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fifty Years of Kicks,
coming next week, April the 12th...

Any overland traveller worth their salt loves a map. The excitement of a fresh paper map spread out on the floor, every mountain pass and izthmus, terra incognita promising adventure.

That Chicken Bus came out of nowhere on my way to fly over the Darien, so I had to drag a bag on that apex... Say, are those Pelican cases?

Bill Dwyer of AtlasRider.com and Matthew Scott Johnston of Magic Rabbit Productions absolutely nail it. Whether you're a cruiser, a sport rider or an ADV rider this really is, Shit Bikers Say



Keep the dirty side up!

Working on the documentary has been fascinating. There are so many elements that come together to make it work. I've been working out the documentary with my producer and we've found that the audio beats the video in importance. We're putting together the story like a radio show - the spoken word is the the structure, the frame, and the video will be placed on top of that frame.

We found that the old fashioned method of shuffling around index cards on a table helped us best in working out the plot. Each index card was a bit of dialogue that our subjects talked about and having them spread out before us really made a logical flow of ideas visible.



Documentary seems to be similar to travel photography; you go out having a rough idea of what you will find, but you really don't know what the story will be until you come back and see what you've shot.

In the meantime, I'm getting deep into learning video editing. I'm taking what I've learned about processing my photos and applying that knowledge to the similar tools in the video editor.
It's all the same things, a bit of contrast, adjusting the white-balance and saturation, a subtle vignette.

Here's a short video made with a bit of the extra footage we shot - just made to teach myself the tools, and give a hint of what's coming. I had fun recording the miniature soundtrack too.
It's all pretty pictures with no story - just the sort of video I was lambasting in the last post!



All for now, I'm off to ride to Ontario for the weekend, see you on the road!

 Me and the mobile studio:

Plenty going on lately, time for an update!

On the road and through the cornfields to Ontario...


A few weeks back, I went to a great presentation by Rene Cromier at BMW Moto Internationale in Montreal.

Rene took a five-year, 41-country, 154 000km (95 000 mile) trip, all the way around the world. The amazing stories are endless and he had much practical advice for everybody considering a similar voyage.

What I admire most is how he's taken his experience and turned it into a career that works for him.
Between book tours and leading adventure motorcycle trips in Africa he's able to live life on his own terms.

His book The University of Gravel Roads is a great read, with plenty of photos and thoughts on the way we and others live. It certainly deserves a spot on your motorcycle bookshelf among Jupiter's Travels and Lois on the Loose.

Rene, holding his breath in the South-Atlantic


The front fender of Rene's BMW F650. It was decorated in Pakistan, with layers of reflective vinyl material, cut freehand with a razor.


My next project is a collaboration with a colleague of mine, we'll be shooting a short documentary video in September. I can't give away the plot, but it will revolve around a couple of particularly well-heeled motorcycle riders we know.

I've been absolutely devouring information about shooting and editing video. It's learning from the ground up about video formats and frame rates and codecs, and all that nonsense, but really it's just taking the audio production I already know and combining it with my photo editing skills. I know exactly what I want to do, I just have to learn how the cameras and software do it!

It's a real soup-from-a-stone production - we're borrowing nearly all the equipment required.
I sure do enjoy the challenge of making something from nothing, but money for food, gas and video tape will have to come from somewhere...

Panasonic DVX100A - Great camera, but only shoots in standard definition
There's a lot of the same skills used in photography and video, but the big difference seems to be that video needs a story, or a change, or something to move it along.

A photograph can stand on it's own as an interesting image. Photography is pure image-making - the composition of, shape, line, texture, colour.


You could make a compelling photo of a motorcycle tire, but a video of a motorcycle tire?
There's so much more you'd need to add to make it worth watching.




Lately, we've seen so much beautiful footage with SLR cameras that shoot video. The images are gorgeous, but often the videos are devoid of story.
After the ohh, ahhh, has worn off there's nothing there. An empty shell.


The short documentary we're working on is going to be very much character driven. The subjects are lively and interesting people. There's already a thousand stories there, the challenge will be choosing what to focus on. It will be a compelling story first and visually interesting on top of that story.

Here's a clip of the footage we shot to test the equipment. Still some technical kinks to be ironed-out but it was enough to convince us that we can do a great job on the real shoot.





I'll keep you all posted on the progress!