Aspiration Rocks
I’d been feeling the urge to do more printing of my photography, which wasn’t really a new feeling but with digital it gets all too easy pass over this critical step in the process. This was also one of many areas of my life where perfect was the enemy of the good. If I’m going to print something, I want it to be big, and then I need a place to hang it, and how many videos to watch on prepping to print, and how much is it going to cost, and on and on.
So, I came up with a project that would remove all of the analysis paralysis from the equation and put some positive vibes into the world at the same time. Local to me, is a short hiking trail called Aspiration trail. Basically it’s a meandering path on the side of a hill where people have left painted rocks with different aspirational phrases on them…at least most of them are aspirational.
When I first learned of this spot - through instagram, of course - I was actually pretty pissed off because it seemed like people were littering this hillside with their dumb rocks. As I was mentally prepping my strongly worded IG reply, lecturing about leave no trace ethics, I saw that someone else had already beat me to it. Well, it turns out the area is private property and the owner allows and maybe even encourages the activity. Whoops.
Anyway, my project was to simply spend an evening wandering among the rocks and photographing 30 or so of my favorites. I’d do some quick edits, send them all out to be printed at 4x5 and then, the fun part. I’d anonymously leave them on a random car or in a mailbox in hopes of paying forward some positivity and bringing a smile to some stranger’s face.
I’d say it’s largely been a success, although I’ve still yet to give away all 30 images. It’s actually not that easy to leave things on parked cars and go unnoticed.
I hope these bring a bit of visual joy and positivity to brighten your day!
