Portfolio Review: Photographer Sam Robinson Shares Beautiful Images of Road Trips and Travels Around the World

Image via Complex Original

Location: Rainbow Canyon, Calif.

“One very early morning I drove into the Californian desert with two models and a pair of Mobat Dutch-style motorbikes. You expect heat in the desert, but it was freezing cold as we arrived, and we were wrapped up in coats and scarves! The sunrise was magical. The sun crept over the horizon, and the Mobats spun about kicking up clouds of dust with nobody around to care. The elements came together into one of my favorite personal projects to date.”

Location: Brazil

“It is always strange to spend Christmas away from home, especially if you are used to cold dark winters days and you find yourself in shorts on a beach. On one such Christmas, I was walking along the coastline of a small Brazilian island called Boipeba when I came across these boys having fun jumping off a small boat into the sea. They loved having their photos taken and couldn’t wait to show off their tricks and flips to each other and my camera.”

Location: Barcelona

“On a typical day in my much-loved Catalan region of Baix Emporda, the sun is shining and a trip to the beach is much like any other. However, on this day there was a low fog cloaking the entire beach. It seemed to have little effect on the regulars, who know that every summer there is a storm that comes through like clockwork in the last week of August, bringing with it warm but unsettled weather. To anyone else it would be a beach day cancelled, but the locals know when to sit it out and when to leave. This was not the time to leave, and the image of hundreds of people seemingly oblivious of the fog made it all the more interesting to photograph.”

Location: USA

“I have a llama named after me in Prairie City, Oregon. It sounds strange to say it, Sam the Llama, but it’s true. The story of how it came to happen is even stranger. The longer version is out there, but the short version is that while travelling across America shooting portraits, I stopped en route to celebrate the Fourth of July with some friends. I was distracted by a family in a small town called Prairie City in eastern Oregon, who convinced me to stay and have something to eat and drink with them. This amounted in me waking up the next day with a pretty serious hangover and being nominated to drive the family’s 1950s vintage tractor in the Fourth of July Parade. It was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity that could not be missed.”

Location: USA

“‘Main Street’ means more than just a road name. It is a metaphor for the life of the ‘Average Joe’ of America. During the recent economic crisis the global media used it to depict a return to more traditional values. Through this project, however, I wanted to show something that is so often lost in these reports—the vibrancy of the people whose lives still revolve around Main Street, USA.”

Location: Palmdale, Los Angeles

“This newly released series is a personal project shot in Palmdale, L.A., showing neon signs shot at twilight on a lost highway. My work has always been influenced by film, so shooting in L.A. and managing to find this location was a dream for me.”

Location: New York

“This unusual sport is exactly what it sounds like; it is polo on bikes. The added excitement came into it when I took an established team up on to a friend’s rooftop in Brooklyn, New York to play a game as the sun set over Manhattan.”

Location: USA

“A disused bowling alley, a deserted theatre, a derelict shopping mall: these strange hulks emerging from the cracked concrete were not what I expected when I set foot on Treasure Island. Visitors to this place, the site of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, had all long gone. With no one to return it to its former glory or to tear it down, it had simply been abandoned to its own fate, marooned like Ben Gunn in Louis Stevenson’s original.”

Location: Joshua Tree, Calif.

“I think the stark stony wilderness of Joshua Tree had quite a shock when a huge blue bus rolled in carrying our shoot team! I was inspired by the classic Route 66 road trip and wanted to show a group of friends channeling the ultimate American spirit in this shoot: driving into the desert with nothing on the agenda but having fun and seizing the moment.”