Leaving on a Jet Plane

As part of my daily habits I was perusing Chase Jarvis‘ excellent photography blog yesterday when I came across an interesting article about what to do when you start to feel stale and burnt out. Quite a few of these ideas stuck in my mind, number two especially…

2. Travel. This can take many forms depending on your budget and timeline, but the gist is to shake up your routine. I can be lots of long weekends regionally, or the other side of the globe. Don’t rely on your standard morning cereal to inspire you. Have fish soup for breakfast in Japan, baked beans in London, or a tuna fish sandwich on Route 66. Sleep in tent or a hostel, or a castle. Travel by train, foot, bike or rickshaw. Mix it up. Meet people.

it seemed especially important because I just photographed two of my friends to help promote the journey they are about to embark on, an interesting project to help them break of the monotony of the day to day.  Twelvehoursinacity.com is the brainchild of my friends Clark Dever and Joe Dinardo, a photographer/web developer and a financial services marketing director respectively. The scope of the project is based on three simple steps:

1. Purchase the month long, all you can fly passes that JetBlue recently sold out of, and fly to as many cities within the US and Caribbean as you can in the 31 days available.

2. You cannot spend more than 12 hours on the ground or in in any one city without traveling.

3. Document every leg of the trip, who you meet, where you go, what you do.

Simple idea right? any one of us could have had it, but these two are actually doing something about it and garnering quite a bit of media attention, including some recent coverage by Time Magazine. All creatives, not just photographers, can benefit from these ideas and if you don’t have the budget to quit your job and fly all over the country for a month straight you can help yourself in smaller ways. Chase Jarvis has some great ideas and any of them can be scaled up or down to help you feel fresh again.

And don’t forget to drop by twelvehoursinacity.com to keep up with the travels of these two.

Joe

Clark