After leaving Badlands I headed over to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. These are both prime destinations for motorcycle dudes visiting Sturgis. Lot’s of death stares from people who are probably nice people 100% ruined the vibe so I bailed early and headed to The Devils Tower or Mato Tipila. I had difficulty finding/deciding on a camp spot and ended up staying at the KOA at the base which was actually a great choice. iKamper is one of the best purchases I have ever made. Seriously enhanced my ability to shoot all day, get lost in the sauce but still get setup quickly once I found a suitable spot.
Stop one of my tour of the National Parks. Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Temps dropped 30 degrees in a matter of hours. Wind was howling 20-30mph all night but the iKamper held up just fine. Photographs of Badlands are as solid as I hoped and I can’t wait to share them along with the rest of the photographs from this trip.
In May of this year, my industry shut down. The shut down rendered me unemployed and made my future uncertain. The strike has outlasted my emergency funds but instead of letting financial ruin consume me, I decided to use what little I had left to make a series of photographs in an attempt to fall deeply in love with our National Parks.The parks have been the subject of hundreds, if not thousands, of series of photographs. Hopefully, they will be the subject of many more going forward. We are truly fortunate to have access to the amount of protected public space that we do in this country. This trip changed my life and I hope that I can share a little bit of the incredible experience that I had along the way. I do not know when I will be able to afford to create a gallery of the images that I created on this journey but I will not show them until I can do it appropriately. These massive and wonderful spaces deserve to be shown in a massive and wonderful way. Stop 1 veered from the path of the actual mission. My official starting point for the photographic portion of this trip was Badlands National Park but the halfway point from Atlanta to there just happened to be Lake of the Ozark, Missouri. I worked on the Netflix Series, Ozark, which was set on this lake. I was one of the few crew that was actually worked on the Missouri unit. 99% of the series was actually shot in Atlanta. Bad weather and a ridiculous amount of mosquitos forced my early departure from LOTO but I did get to show off two of the 4 locations I had originally planned to feature.Next Episode will drop in a week and is an exploration of Badlands National Park and few places close by. Thanks for joining me on this journey.- Kevin Dowling
New blog, vlogs and series of photographs being created now. Pleasuring Grounds explores the National Parks, Monuments and Forests of the American West. I have been getting after it and am trying my hardest to create photos that reflect the calm, vast and powerful energy of the Wild West,. Love in my heart. Gas in my tank. Tent on my roof.
