Van life on Highway 1: film stories from the California coast (part 1)

A quick travel diary before start documenting the coolest California van life ever. Film roll 4 out of 7. Fine Art print available.

Continuing my San Francisco trip across the film rolls. A friend of mine picked me up by car right after visiting Golden Gate Park, and we drove to Pacifica. The weather wasn’t very good that day, and the light was slightly dim. I did score some gas station leaks though, not about gas, but light (phew!)

The photo below caught my attention because it was an update on her relationship. I love when a photo self-contains a story. The photo is marked as 2025, which is the current year we’re in. And all within this year, Maria probably made promises, fell in love, then got frustrated, and went there and pressed the real world’s undo button.

(You have to be logged in Substack to vote on the above poll).

Or was it someone else who is in love with Maria and disapproves of her relationship with whoever this is? The + sign looks like a weird symbol too…

I felt this photo very enigmatic. Itwas taken on a pier in Pacifica, with a great view of the Pacific Ocean.

After that day, my friend Leandro and I decided to go play some ping pong, where I got a classic record of what a street photographer does. Rather than paying attention to the professionals playing table tennis (there’s a distinction between ping pong and table tennis — one is casual), the broken balls box caught my attention and I got obsessed with it, spending a couple of film shots.

It was time to sleep and wake up to start what would end up being a very cool California Van Life trip, where my buddy Vinicius picked me up in his van, and drove me down Highway 1.

On this van trip, I could photograph some incredible landscapes and document a bit of what van life looks like in California.

We hit the road! Highway 1 was our destination. We made some stops to brew coffee, appreciate the Pacific Ocean landscape and beaches, and have a good time.

That's when I took the first landscape, which rendered out beautifully on film! Every photographer (including street ones) gets amazed when faced with such colors in real life.

I am calling this photo “Pacific Edge".

Pacific Edge now available as a Fine Art Print

This is California at its most elemental. No filters, no digital manipulation. Just silver halide crystals recording what the lens saw: geology, botany, and oceanography collaborating on a canvas that’s been millions of years in the making, right out of my van trip in Highway 1.

This is a limited series of 3.

Pacific Edge hanging on a wall, 3D mock preview.

With museum-quality archival pigment print on Japanese paper, each print individually developed and scanned in-house, read more about my fine art prints here.

Now available in A3+ size (13”x19”). Get yours.

Stay tuned for the next film rolls, because the van life registries are just at the beginning.