2024 & 2025

THE IDEA:

The idea for this card took root a few years back when I started noticing gatherings of five or six e-bike food delivery guys hanging out in a cluster near the restaurant on my street. They would sit on their parked e-bikes or stand next to them, their insulated delivery bags empty, and chat and joke with each other until an order came in and then off they went on their delivery mission. I first imagined I would insert myself into this group as they were waiting around, only instead of GrubHub or Door Dash or Uber Eats, my insulated cooler bag would say “Happy Holidays.”

Like many of my ideas, they come to me before their time – meaning I usually am working on one card, when the germ of an idea for the next card comes to me. It was 2023 when I started thinking about the e-bike delivery clusters. But at that time, I was already working on the Construction Site/Stop Sign card idea. And I was doing what I do for any card idea - which is to take lots of scouting photographs whenever I happen upon a similar real-life scene in the city.

So I was busy taking scouting photos of construction sites around the city, and when I would review them, I kept seeing that I was unintentionally capturing these e-bike guys in there too. They started to intrigue me even more. Once I had my eye out for them, I saw them everywhere – not just in clusters on the sidewalks waiting for an order to come in, but whizzing by me or pulling up next to me at a stop light while I was on a citibike. These e-bike delivery people seemed like they were making the city run. The amount of things being ferried from one place to another was astonishing.

While I’d started out thinking this would be a scene of e-bike delivery people at rest, waiting for an order, it became clear that their real essence is being on the move and so my idea got more ambitious – I wanted to be riding an e-bike, positioned among them, moving on the busy streets of New York City among cars and pedestrians, with my insulated “Happy Holidays” cooler bag.

I became a bit obsessed with e-bike delivery people after that. I loved how tricked out their bikes are. They have big puffy polyester “mittens” attached to their handle-bars to keep their hands warm while still being able to access the e-bike gears and brake – and then white plastic grocery bags tied over these mittens to keep the whole thing dry. They have milk crates attached to their back bike rack. They have multiple insulated cooler bags hooked over their handle-bars along with phone holders and rear view mirrors. Their “uniform” is all about the weather – in the summer that could be flip flops, pants and a T-shirt and in winter that mostly translates to a big puffy coat, a thick woolen hat and boots. They are all weather all the time. Most wear motorcycle-style or bicycle helmets. And they often ride along in a classic side-saddle stance, with both legs draped over the middle bar of the bike since all the “driving” is done with their thumbs on the e-bike controller – no pedaling necessary.

Back in the 1990s, the OG bike messengers were everywhere - zipping in and out of traffic on actual bicycles, pedaling furiously with their classic messenger bags slung over their backs, no bike lanes, no helmets. They were mostly carrying documents (papers or photos or whatever would fit into their messenger bags). Their need was great since this was before faxing was fully viable (early 1990s faxes printed out on chemical paper that was floppy and faded over time) and long before email existed. Then as technology advanced, and paper and documents and photographs could be sent via computer, bike messengers became obsolete.

Today’s e-bike delivery people are the 1990s bike messenger equivalents – only they are delivering food or other actual 3-D objects instead of printed documents. Ironically, technology is what keeps them in business – with the advent of online ordering, delivery apps, Instacart, etc, there is no end to what can be ordered and picked up by these e-bikers. They too zip in and out of traffic, only they don’t pedal at all, their “messenger bags” are insulated cooler bags, there are now lots of bike lanes, and unlike their 1990s brethren, they do wear helmets. They ride in any weather just like their 1990s counterparts, but since theirs are electric bikes, their silhouettes show an ease and stillness as they zip along in the bike lanes, perched on their bike seats without actually moving their legs. Stop at any light in Manhattan and at least 3 or 4 of them will pull up waiting for the light to turn green as they wind their way through the city streets delivering their bounty to waiting hands. Step into a Chick-Fil-A or a Shake Shack and you’ll see a bevy of e-bikes parked outside waiting for a delivery order to come in. Throughout 2024, after the construction site/stop sign card was behind me, I was constantly snapping scouting photos of any tricked-out e-bike or e-biker I saw. In the end, I have 400 photographs of various e-bike delivery scenes stored in an album on my iphone. For my holiday card photo, I wanted to emulate them as closely as I could in my clothing, prop bags and chosen e-bike and this was how I studied every detail later on – by going through the photos one by one to get more ideas.

2023 became 2024. In Manhattan, e-bike delivery people are predominantly immigrants. And the anti-immigrant rhetoric that was being spouted throughout 2024 during the Presidential campaign (and that now is being violently and arbitrarily instituted in 2025) made me want to do this e-bike idea even more. I was feeling a strong desire to stand in solidarity with these very hard-working immigrants who I’d been studying through my camera lens and who eventually helped me bring this card idea to life. Given that each of them I interacted with didn’t speak English, I’d suspect many of them are undocumented or here legally but tenuously (ie on an asylum visa). If the current administration has its way and all of these hardworking immigrants are deported, the delivery economy would come to a screeching halt. Obviously, picking up your own take-out food is hardly the worst fate one can be consigned to, but it does lay bare and seems symbolic for how deeply this city - and this country - depends on immigrants in more ways than we are aware of.

This card idea started at the end of 2023, I scouted it and mulled it over all of 2024, I prepped and propped and we took the photos in early 2025 and now, as I write this, it is December of 2025 – 2 full years later. A lot has happened in my life and in our country during that time and it was these personal and political zigs and zags that have had me weaving and bobbing my way to the finish line here. I’ve had to re-find my mojo over and over and over again. As part of that, this time around and for the first time in my card-making history (since 1992), I had two separate photo shoots for the same card. The uptown shoot was in early January, the downtown shoot was in early March. As I came to find out, this was an ambitious set up with many challenging logistics. I learned a lot in Shoot #1 and applied that learning in Shoot #2. Ending up doing two shoots allowed me to immerse myself in the e-bike delivery world the way I like to - not once but twice. And when the final images of both shoots are taken together, the elements I’d hoped to capture are all there.

Even though this card was originally intended to be for 2024 and was meant to be sent out in early 2025 (as a belated 2024 Holiday card), it now has the honored position of representing both 2024 and 2025. I have officially lapped myself.


THE UPTOWN SHOOT:

I arranged with my long-time collaborator and photographer Geoffrey Croft to photograph on Friday January 3, 2025. (Yes, I’d let go of photographing it before the holidays.) I’d been working for weeks on making my prop delivery bags that said “Happy Holidays” (in the style of the GrubHub logo). In the process of finding the right size and shape bag that was also made of a fabric that I was able to draw on, I ended up with dozens (yes, dozens!) of other prop bags. My plan was to show up costumed and ready to go - in my well-studied e-biker outfit of jeans, a big puffy coat and a woolen hat along with my prop bags – and find a bike. Which really meant, finding someone who would let me use their e-bike. I specifically wanted an e-bike that I liked the aesthetics of – with attached mittens and plastic bags over the mittens and with a milk crate mounted on the back rack.

We met up at 86th and 3rd Ave, where there’s a Chick-Fil-A and usually a hubbub of e-bikers waiting around for orders to come in. I naively thought I could offer one of them $50 to use their e-bike for an hour. I thought I might be offering them more than they would be making in an hour, and thus, they’d say yes and accept my offer! Turns out, I was wrong.

When we arrived at noon, there were around ten e-bikes right outside of Chick-Fil-A. It was pre-lunch rush so it looked like they were waiting for orders to come in. I was excited as it seemed like we would have a lot of choices. Geoff and I went off to scout various corners to figure out where to situate ourselves given the angle of the sun, the direction of traffic, and how to get all of the elements in the frame that I wanted - the bike lane, other e-bikers, and the city background of pedestrians and buildings. We chose our location – I would be traveling crosstown on 86th and 3rd on the north side of the intersection. By the time we were done with all of that, it was 1:30, and there was only one e-biker left outside of Chick-Fil-A – lunchtime delivery was in full swing and I feared that I’d missed my window to find someone game to lend me their e-bike.

Geoff, my friend Rachel and I set about procuring the e-bike with my $50 offer. The one e-biker still outside of Chick-Fil-A was Spanish speaking so Rachel translated but he said he was working and he couldn’t do it. More e-bikers arrived at Chick-Fil-A to pick up orders, so we tried a few more people, same thing. We split up and wandered to other corners - Rachel asking one person, Geoff asking another, and me yet another. We used google translate because at 86th and 3rd, on this particular day, a good portion of the e-bike delivery people were Senegalese and thus French speaking. It took a bit for them to understand the very strange concept that I wanted to take their e-bike and use their e-bike and have a photo taken of me on their e-bike (and that I wasn’t asking them to be in the photo, just their bike). But still, most of them had shown up because they had already accepted the order to pick up from Chick-Fil-A so they had to go. Finally one person spoke enough English for me to ask him where they wait BEFORE they have an order to pick up, and he said “Shake Shack!”

Off to Shake Shack we went, just around the corner. Only there was no bevy of e-bikers there either. It was essentially the same thing. Except this time I had to use Bengali google translate - a whole other alphabet! Everyone was very nice. A few people said, “Can you do it right now, here?” (Ah, they don’t know me and my quest for realism). And many of them said I didn’t need to pay them, I just needed to do it right then and there (on the sidewalk where they were waiting for their pickup). While Google Translate is amazing – instantly enabling me to communicate with someone in their language – it felt like something was being lost in translation. Finally I got an explanation from someone who spoke enough English that we were able to speak directly to each other. I asked him why it was so hard to find someone to say yes. “Couldn’t you just not accept some pickups offered and instead accept my $50 offer?” I asked. He explained that he was essentially on-the-clock for Instacart right then. So if they sent him an order to pickup and he didn’t accept it, then his rate would go down. So essentially for the time period that he had declared that he would be working, he needed to keep going or risk getting paid less. I had wrongly thought that these guys were in control of what they said yes and no to, and in the big picture they likely are, but they would also get financially penalized for taking 30-60 minutes to hang out with me making my holiday card despite my $50 offer!

It suddenly became discouragingly clear that I had needed to have arranged with someone ahead of time to use his e-bike before he was actually working - and that now seemed an impossible task to achieve during a very busy lunch hour on the upper east side. So while it might appear I was very prepared – I’d bought 30 prop bags, spent 20 hours figuring out how to draw on the bags, studied paint colors, planned my outfit, arranged for friends to be background extras and had Rachel there for any possible Spanish translation – it turns out that I wasn’t prepared for the main most important item, which was the e-bike. I left it up to chance to find the right person who would lend me the right bike at the right time. In the past, I’d have lined that up ahead of time. This time I thought I could wing it.

At 2pm, after a ½ hour of failing at trying to get someone to let me use their e-bike, and with the sun threatening to set behind the tall buildings, Geoff had the idea to go directly to stores and ask if they had a dedicated e-bike delivery person who might be open to this offer. Inside Mimi’s Pizza Shop, on 86th Street between 2nd & 3rd, we spoke to the owner, who told us to speak to Umberto. Umberto is the in-house e-bike delivery guy and he was an immediate yes before we even explained much. He also said I didn’t need to pay him – which is always a lovely reminder that people want to help each other when they can (I did pay him). I was elated with one caveat -- I didn’t know what his bike looked like yet! It’s a pizza shop so it had a rack on the front for pizza - which came in handy because one of my final props was an insulated pizza bag. And it had mittens attached to the handlebars – a must for me!

Umberto came outside with us and by 2:05pm, I was bungying my green plastic milk crate (Yes, I BYO’d a milk crate) to the back of Umberto’s bike, I filled the milk crate with my props, hung the prop bags off the handle bars, and the photo shoot began.

There was A LOT of coordination needed for this photo set up – while Geoff the photographer was stationary, everything else is was in motion. I’m moving, the car traffic is moving, and the pedestrians are moving. We could only cross, and therefore photograph, with a green light. As soon as the light turned, I’d ride across the street on the bike while Geoff was in the middle of the intersection photographing. Then if the light was still green, we’d all turn the bike around on the sidewalk, reset the props to the opposite handlebar, reset our background extras and cross again, and we’d continue to this dance until the light turned red again. Meanwhile, when the light was green and we were doing all of this, cars were attempting to turn up 3rd Ave from 86th street and they were being blocked by me posing and Geoff photographing -- with Geoff essentially in the middle of the area where the cars were turning. To add to that, the milk crate I’d bungeed on to the back of the bike kept falling off. However, we were losing light, and we felt like we needed to get Umberto back his bike in case he got a pizza delivery order, and so we kept going as fast as we could.

I’d brought different prop bags of varying sizes and one of them was a very large orange GrubHub insulated cooler backpack. I already had an insulated pizza box holder on the front bike rack, 2 insulated cooler bags hanging off the handlebars, and then I put the huge orange backpack on my back and said, “Is this too much?” to which Geoff, Dave, Rachel and Judy all laughed. “Isn’t that the point?” one of them said.

This time when Geoff said we were done, that we got it, we actually stopped (unlike many past years where that is the cue for me to say, “let’s keep going!”). The light had gone behind the building and we needed to return the bike. We disassembled the bike, returned it to Umberto, thanked him, paid him and then went on to our new post-shoot celebratory ritual of looking immediately at the photos on my laptop while eating bagels and laughing about the caper we just pulled off. The fun of making the photograph was done and the card making could begin (or so we thought).


THE INTERLUDE:

With the 2024 election, the inauguration, the subsequent craziness coming out of the White House along with some personal emotional challenges, I could not get myself to do anything with these cards. I was in a funk. I wasn’t taking any of the next steps needed to create the card that eventually gets mailed out. What steps might that be? Choosing final photos, sitting for hours with Jack at Quick Color Photo Lab to get them ready for printing, making the prints, hand-coloring the prints, trimming the prints by hand with a paper-cutter, finding the right card stock, mounting the photos on cards with photo corners, rubber stamping the QR code and website URL on the cards, creating the inside of the card, and then finally writing the card out to it’s recipient. All of that has to happen and I was making no moves to do any of it.

I liked the images we got yet my vision of having other bikers in my shot was missing – these same e-bikers that I’d been scouting and photographing for a year. The photos we did get from the uptown shoot were rich with the elements of an Upper East Side street scene – the skycrapers, the New York City pedestrians, and me laden with insulated cooler bags like an experienced e-bike sherpa. Yet aside from one e-biker who we managed to catch in the distance, we had not captured the hubbub of the clusters of e-bikers so often seen. It felt more impactful for me if there had been more e-bikers prominent in the photograph. I wanted more interaction with them as part of my desire to step into and inhabit their world, if only for an afternoon. Yes, I wanted to look like one of them and I also wanted to be among them- especially in light of the anti-immigration rhetoric going on. This is harder than it seems because they are literally always on the move. This missing part was haunting me. I was feeling incomplete.

Almost every year, without fail, I tell Geoff that I want to reshoot. And every time I ask, he says no. It’s part of our dance. And in the past, he’s been right - I have ended up loving the very cards I hated at first (and wanted to reshoot).

Even though that’s my pattern, there was still something eating at me. Every other year, I accepted this. This time it felt different. I wanted a chance to make that vision happen. For the uptown shoot, I felt less prepared than I usually am and wondered if that contributed to this – and wondered what it might feel like if I gave it my all preparation-wise. Would that have helped? So this time, my desire to shoot again felt more like a re-do on my end - to do it the way I usually do, put the time in before-hand so that the magic can then unfold.

After almost two months of sitting on the photos and not doing much with them, I started to feel motivated. Part of it might have been the passage of time, part of it might have been the dark days of winter starting to fade, but a lot of it was because it was starting to get warmer outside and if I was going to re-shoot, I wanted it to still be cold so all the e-bikes would still have mittens attached and the other e-bikers would still be in winter puffy coats. So I was motived by the threat of the loss of mittens!! I started scouting.


THE LOCATION SCOUT:

I realized that part of what makes it an impossible task to get clusters of e-bikers in my photo is that they almost never stop. I also do this when I’m riding a bike in the city. It’s a game. If the light is red, how long can I balance on my bike without putting my foot down? If I slow down so I’m barely moving, can I balance long enough until the light changes? Are there any cars coming or can I scoot across even if the light is red? So getting in a frame with me and other e-bikers is quite literally a moving target. Also lots of e-bikers are riding alone - they are zipping everywhere and in every direction and they are almost always one-offs. They are just so ubiquitous, that it feels like they are everywhere but getting a bunch in one frame is challenging. The exception is that they can form a group at the major cross streets that are two-way – like 14th Street, 23rd Street, 34th Street, and 42nd Street. At those intersections, the streets are too wide to zip across against the light, so at those red lights, the e-bikers line up waiting for the light to turn and they are actually stopped.

Because the sunlight in the winter is mostly from the south, and because I wanted to photograph on an avenue for the width, I’d have to be riding on a downtown avenue which meant I could narrow down my scout to 2nd Ave, 5th Ave and 7th Ave (all of which go downtown) at the big intersections of 14th Street, 23rd Street, 34th Street, or 42nd Street.

I used a website called suncalc.org which tells you how low the sun is in the sky on a specific date and time at a specific corner. I used that to tell me what time of day I needed to be photographing at each of the different corners. And then I rode a citibike e-bike around to all of the possible intersections to see what I’d get in frame and if I liked the aesthetics of the corner.


THE NEGOTIATION:

I saw a bike locked to a bike rack outside of Daniels’ Bike Shop on 14th Street near 2nd Avenue. The bike was nicely tricked out so I wanted to see if it’s owner would let me use the bike for my aspirational reshoot. A group of e-biker delivery guys were hanging out inside. The shop owner Daniel pointed to one of them when I asked whose bike that was. That person immediately said, “What is the problem?” I said, “No problem, I just would like to use your bike for a photograph.”

The bike owner’s name was Amad and he was Senegalese, as were all the other e-bikers hanging out in the shop. None of them spoke English. I ended up being in the shop for about an hour in “conversation” with Amad through google translate about using his bike. Why an hour? When using translation it takes twice as long, and as it turned out we used three languages, so it took 3 times as long! To be able to communicate with him, I asked Amad what language he spoke, and he said “French.” So I typed into google translate, “I would like to use your e-bike for an hour next week for a photograph.” I then showed my phone to Amad which had the French translation, “Je souhaiterais utiliser votre vélo électrique pendant une heure la semaine prochaine pour une photo. » But then Amad would show my phone to another guy who would read the French, then he would speak to Amad in yet another language. Amad would answer in that language, then the intermediary would type his answer in French in my phone, “Quand souhaitez-vous l'utiliser ? » Google translate would do it’s thing and then I would read in English, “When do you want to use it?”. I later found out that in Senegal, French is the language they learn in school, but Wolof is the local dialect. And thus we went back and forth and back and forth English to French to Wolof back to French to English. (I also much later found out I could have used google translate directly to Wolof). Imagine this going on for an hour!

Meanwhile, e-bike delivery guys, mostly all Senegalese, would keep flowing into the bike shop. The shop owner Daniel and his co-worker spoke mostly Spanish and a little bit of English - so even to get their bikes fixed, these guys had to use google translate (Wolof or French to Spanish and back again). At one point, I heard one of the Senegalese delivery guys pointing to the key for his bike lock and saying “cle”, and Daniel pointing to the same object and saying “key” and “llave” – thus teaching each other their respective languages. I felt like I was dropping into a subculture and I just loved being around this multi-cultural, sharing, supportive, and respectful environment.

Through the English-French-Wolof chain of google translate, I’d initially offered Amad $100 to be able to use his e-bike for an hour and I’d initially thought I’d be doing the shoot near 42nd and Lex (this negotiation was taking place at 14th and 2nd Ave so getting to 42nd and Lex would require some travel). He asked for $200, I said that’s too much. And then he asked for a $700 guarantee. I said I can’t do that. He then said he would do it for $100 but he would come with a 2nd bike. This part got lost in translation as it would have been great to have him along on a 2nd bike but I wasn’t sure I was understanding so I was trying to clarify what he meant.

At that point, someone new came in the bike shop who spoke better English and he translated for us verbally (not google translate) and I came to understand that Amad was concerned that if I was going to take off on his bike, he wanted to be there with a 2nd bike that he would be on to be able to watch me (and chase me if I took off!) I wasn’t fully confident, at that point, in my e-bike riding skills so I was a little concerned about riding the bike myself from 14th Street to 42nd Street as opposed to Amad riding it there for me (I ride citibikes e-bikes but they are pedal assist, not fully electric like these e-bikes where you don’t even have to pedal).

Then, a few more guys came in, and they all started speaking excitedly in Wolof, and what it sounded like to me was “blah-blah-blah-blah-guarantee!-blah-blah-blah-guarantee!” over and over again. Suddenly Amad was back to saying he wanted a $700 guarantee. He said that way if I took off with the bike or ruined his bike somehow, he’d be able to buy a new one.

It made complete sense. These e-bikes are worth about $1000 and up and I was just walking in asking to use one for $100 for one hour. If this was a car, I would expect someone to ask for a deposit. I was asking Amad for him to lend me the source of his livelihood. Once I got used to the idea, It seemed fair and it was an exercise in trust - who was going to trust who first. Would Amad trust me to lend me his bike? Would I trust Amad that I’d get my $700 back? I agreed to the $700 guarantee, left the bike shop with Amad’s name and phone number and a loose plan that I’d come back to use his bike on Tuesday. He said, through google translate, “I’m always here.”

Now that this was becoming real, I had to have a photographer. Geoff stuck with his decision not to be part of the additional setups - he really liked what we had gotten uptown and didn’t want to change that in his mind. So Rachel and Dave both agreed to photograph.


THE DOWNTOWN SHOOT:

In March, on the day of the “downtown” shoot, I went to Daniel’s bike shop - no Amad. I’d switched the shoot date from Tuesday to Monday and had tried reaching Amad ahead of time to tell him this, but was unsuccessful so I was hoping he’d actually “always be there” like he had said. Daniel, the bike repair shop owner, knew me at this point and told me they often hang out across the street in front of the pizza shop, so I went over there but no one was there. My heart sinking, It seemed this shoot was shaping up similarly – no e-bike!

In the meantime, Rachel and Dave arrived to photograph. We had planned to practice with a Citibike before using the actual prop e-bike - and since I didn't have that prop e-bike secured yet – we now had plenty of time to practice! We went out to the corner and I got to know the timing of the traffic light and where to position myself at the red light so that as the actual delivery e-bikers arrived at the light, they would be visible around me as we all waited for the light to change. I’d bought two helmets and when we tried them, the first one created a dark shadow on my face and the other obscured my eyes so, even though realistic, we realized I couldn’t wear a helmet for the photo. I tested out how far to go through the intersection when the light turned green, where to safely turn around and how to get back into position again as quickly as I could in order to make the most out of one green light. Dave and Rachel situated themselves on different areas of the sidewalk so as not to get in each other’s frame while still being able to capture me as I whizzed by them with my e-bike delivery comrades. Since we were re-doing this setup, we all wanted to feel we were on the right track before using the actual prop bike.

Then I went back to Daniel’s bike shop and eventually someone came in who knew Amad and called him. Finally, Amad came. He immediately said that he wanted a guarantee and I don’t think he believed I would agree to it. I showed him that I had $700 cash in an envelope ready for him as a guarantee and his eyes grew wide. I also showed him I had $100 cash in a 2nd envelope ready for him for payment. He looked very surprised. I was trusting him first. He suddenly became very reluctant to take the money – he did not want to touch the envelopes. He asked Daniel to hold both of the envelopes until we were done.

Amad then set out to get his bike ready for me. He’d taken off the plastic mittens so I asked him to put them back on. He emptied his milk crate and put in my prop bags. With sign language, he taught me how to turn on the electric part of the bike and to use the hand levers inside the mittens to make it go faster or slower and to brake. Amad came out to the corner where we planned to photograph at 14th and 2nd along with two other bikers from the shop but it seemed that Amad didn’t yet understand the concept that the photo was of me so he kept posing with us (me on his bike, him in front of me standing in the street). It was a sweet moment.

Eventually we got going with the shoot – the whole point of this additional shoot was to get other e-bikers in the shot. The lights on 2nd Avenue are timed, so if cars or bikes go 25mph, they don’t have to stop for a light from 86th Street down to 14th Street. That meant the streets could be empty for minutes at a time until a clump of cars and e-bikers came sailing downtown riding the consecutive green lights. So, I’d wait until I could see a clump of bikers coming down 2nd Avenue, and I’d join them as they passed me. Or it meant, waiting at the red light at 14th Street and hoping that a cluster of e-bikers would line up behind me – which thankfully did happen. And then the light would turn green and we would all take off.

Eventually, because it was taking too long to wait for the timed lights and hoping we’d get some e-bikers, we went back to Daniel’s bike shop and recruited two others - Babou and Matar - to ride with me so that we were less reliant on the random-ness of waiting to see if bikers would show up. It was a great feeling to be riding an e-bike, controlling my speed and braking with my hands alone, no pedaling needed. We would line up at 16th Street, and then ride together down to 14th Street, turn around and do it again. One challenge was getting Babou and Matar to NOT look at the camera!

Like the uptown shoot, it all happened so fast with so many moving parts and after a couple of hours, I felt good – I tried my hardest, prepped as I normally would have, and felt that even if I didn’t end up getting exactly what I’d envisioned, it was so worth the effort.

After we were finished, we returned to Daniel’s bike shop and Rachel took some portraits of Amad, Babou and Matar. They were happily posing for the camera. I told them I would send them the photos and, in my mind, that meant I would print them and bring them back to give to them – along with the finished cards. We exchanged whatsapp info. And then, with his e-bike safely returned to him, Amad approached Daniel who had been holding the two envelopes for us. Daniel gave me back the envelope with the $700 guarantee and gave Amad the envelope with the $100 cash payment for using his bike. It was a sweet moment of mutual trust.

Less than an hour after I left, Babou sent me whatsapp messages asking for the photos – they wanted to see them right then! (They clearly didn’t understand my artistic process and they wanted to see the photos ASAP. A wise choice, given that it would take 9 more months for me to get them the finished card.) I quickly looked through the photos and messaged each of them photos that featured them. All in all, it was a bit of a zany adventure and I definitely got my fix of being immersed in the e-biker world.

I just loved that I was giving myself the chance for a do-over -- that I was allowing myself to try again, to do it the way I like to do it, to prepare in the way I like to prepare and to go for the vision I wanted. I recognized that what I wanted to do was hard to do with cars in traffic, pedestrians crossing the street, changing traffic lights, the setting sun, and bikers on the move. In the end, because I put my full self into it, I felt complete about it. Even if I didn’t get every element I’d hoped for, I knew I’d feel much better this time knowing I’d given it my best effort.

I like the images from uptown and I like the images from downtown. And I especially liked that I found my mojo again through the reshoot and found my energy and my motivation to keep going with these cards and with life. I know, that sounds dramatic and that’s how dramatic it felt.

xo
Happy Holidays
Danya