One of my best buddies in the world happens to be Craig Sheffer, who starred with Brad Pitt in the Robert Redford film A River Runs Through It. It was the 30th anniversary of the film and I get a phone call from LA that goes like this:

”Hey buddy, wanna do a road trip?”
”Depends.”
”Ever seen The Grand Canyon, The Great Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Yellowstone, Mojave Desert or any of that good stuff?"

“I’ll see you next week!”

After landing, we hit the road.

It’s scorching. Air conditioning is on throughout the entire trip, but what a trip! From the Mexican border to the Canadian border and back, taking in the majestic scenery at every turn. Craig took on 100% of the driving and made light work of it. Lots of anecdotes of previous trips, occasional stops in unexpected places and we’re in our element.

I restricted my cameras to Leica only for this trip. Two M5’s and a digital M10, plenty of film and lenses from 15mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm to 90mm. I kept it light.

We met so many amazing people. I bumped into Tony, who is the new Ansel Adams of the National Parks. We spent a bit of time talking about cameras of course, and he was doing an amazing job in the Grand Canyon when we met.

From beautiful rivers and mountains, to astounding and colossal walls of the Vermillion Cliffs, this was in every way the adventure of my lifetime. Craig saw all of the locations he shot in once more, and would I go again? Absolutely.

To cap it all, in a very interesting way, Craig has a huge collection of film photographs he took while shooting the film. We took a portrait of Brad Pitt that has remained completely unseen to the world to a quality printer in Livingstone Montana and a large image was produced.

30 years after being taken, at that location, the photograph comes home to be made real. There’s something poetic in that, and that one of a kind print of a moment almost never seen is now hung on a wall in Santa Monica.