A lot of things in my life have been changing. Not for better or worse but there was a time that I could send a text message to Kyle and moments later I could be riding immediately from my door with my camera harnessed on my back and no real detail on how the day would go. We would make work that was important to us or important to our growth and understanding of photography. I’m sure if I looked back I would struggle to find any real level of “importance” in that work but, at the time, that’s what we thought it was.

In those times it was all personal work. Not to say that my life has evolved too far from where it once was but I can’t recall a recent moment where I’ve made cycling work because it was calling me. Sure, I’ve gone for plenty of rides with my camera in recent history but I hadn’t brought my camera with me to share the experience of riding with someone else. My time has either been so limited due to work or certainly my increasing anxiety has limited my ability to plan rides or both. Either way, finding time to create and share this experience has crawled its way up on my priority list.

To take this a step further, and this much more embarrassing than anything, I had no work of a Black woman up until this point. It’s not to say I haven’t made great photos of Black women in the past, I have. I’ve actually made a portrait of Rachel months prior to this and it was fun. But all of these photos have been made in a passive fashion. The portrait and more broadly, the photograph, is something I hold sacred. I don’t think this needs to be the case for every photographer but, behind every photograph that I can envision, there’s something I want to give to the subject in hopes that establishes a sort of self-esteem, or something. It’s hard to describe what that is but I think history shows that portraits have the potential for this. And so, I hadn’t made a single photograph, with this level of intent, of a Black woman. Clearly, this had to change.

Rachel and I are acquaintances with more than a handful of mutual friends. Ironically, although Rachel lives in the Bay Area, we met in St. Louis. She won Ayesha McGowan’s mini-grants in 2021 so we bumped into each other, almost literally, at Gateway Cup.  We also rode in the same “group” southbound on CA-1 for nearly 400 miles on the coast ride earlier this year. And although we rarely saw one another on that ride we had dinner after the final day in Santa Barbara which lasted a couple of hours. We would run into each other in this fashion a few more times but, long story short, this is the nature of our encounters.

Besides these infrequent run-ins, Rachel has jumped back and forth throughout the country, and the world, experiencing cycling in a way that I could only dream of… and she’s only been doing it for a literal fraction of the time. It’s my assumption that her recent travels are either the source or the recipient of this radiant energy she possesses. She’s on a deep dive with cycling and it’s something you don’t see too often, even from the most passionate and veteran of cyclists. That being said, as we were coordinating for this ride, Rachel expressed a need to not worry and ‘just ride’ which was my focus for selecting our route.

At the moment, I really enjoy not knowing the person [very well] that I’m photographing. I get to make up a story in my head of what represents the person in front of me. If you have the pleasure of meeting Rachel, that energy I mentioned before, she’s going to give you a full dose. I don’t think we’ve spent enough time around each other to “put my finger on” what that is but ‘captivating’ is a good describing word. There’s also quite a bit of irony in the fact that Rachel is perceivably always thinking—as she is a very thoughtful person—but can be stumped immediately by asking her generic “favorites” questions. I experienced this while we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to Stinson Beach. Being able to find little tidbits about a person makes photographing fun.

If I made it seem like I had some huge, grandiose vision pre-imagined, I didn’t. The only photographic element I was sure of was the mood. There was one thing I could perceive to be purely New York about this east coast transplant and that was her matter-of-factness. She’s too free spirited to be a city girl and not rough enough around the edges to assume she would be from a podunk town somewhere upstate. It’s San Francisco, at 7am, at the end of March. What speaks to any of these traits without being too cliche? It’s probably dramatic to label this as a “problem” so we’ll just say my brain was pulling every resource and visual queue to make sure I placed, or sat, Rachel somewhere that feels right. It’s the way Kyle and I used to do it anyway.

I’m sure everyone who makes photos often enough has a sort of process. Something that they do to make themselves feel like they’re making the right decisions in-frame. I think because I haven’t gone out with the intentions that I set for this ride I got disconnected from this way of making photographs. No “shot list”, no “inspo”, no “have to”, no “good”, no “bad”. Just make decisions and make photos. Sounds super utopian, I know, but this is where I’ve learned new techniques and where time does not influence urgency. I feel that these sessions have always helped me explore aspects of photography that I’m less familiar with or that I may not know at all.

Without being too corny this ride came “full circle”. Technically, it was a semi-fancy out-and-back but I think we both got what we wanted out of this ride. Photography inevitably brings the ride to a halt so our stops were lengthy but limited to keep both of us satisfied with the amount of actual cycling involved. And, by the time we climbed our way from Stinson, I couldn’t be more content, “I have what I need.” In terms of cycling write ups I think reading, “… in a sport that is so White…” can feel like an obligatory statement  but in this case it couldn’t be more true. As I become more and more proud and confident with the body of work that I have, I can't help but consider what that work would mean if I didn’t have work that represented my own culture thoroughly? I couldn’t begin to think of where to point you to see this type of work exist anywhere but here, actually. Or at least not without the intent of selling you a product with a precisely portioned side dish of inclusivity. This is definitely not that. It’s not a forced campaign of anything. It’s just work that represents a wonderful chapter in this person’s life.

I really missed riding like this. Sometimes it’s the coming-back-to-familiarity part that makes these experiences so exciting. It’s the reminder that I’ve cultivated moments like this enough times that certain sensations, the ones that make all of this memorable, can still be easily evoked. That part. That part is important. Not in terms of aiding creativity, it is but that’s not what I mean. I just don’t know how I could have gotten here if I never had anything to miss.