Why I ROAM: Christopher Stricklen
I think a photograph communicates a certain idea, a certain expression, and usually it's just part of a bigger thought. There's always some sort of photographic inspiration coming when I'm getting on the bike these days. My name is Christopher Stricklen. I am a full time photographer, cyclist, dad, soccer player. Picked the camera back up when my first son was born, or my only son, and I was just taking, you know, baby pictures. But it wasn't something that I had any clue what I was doing. I didn't know that you could really be a professional photographer or I didn't have that aspiration to. I just knew I loved photography. I grew up in the Bay Area. I was just an active kid.
I just, like, wanted to do stuff. You know,
I felt like that was, like still what I was born to do is like, doing physical, fun activities is like my thing. There was a time, actually, when I started shooting, that I couldn't take a photo of a bicycle to save my life. It took a lot of foundational experience first, to know what I was doing and to know what I was looking for. You add in the element of cycling, and then I was able to see these relationships between what I was shooting outside of cycling, like street photography or landscapes or architecture. I was starting to see those elements present themselves in cycling.
And then that's when things started to click. And that's when I started looking at things different, like how to capture motion or how to make a portrait or, you know, cycling started to show me that, oh, all of these things are actually here. You might have to look at it a little bit different. Your timing might have to be adjusted a little bit, but it was one of those things that is like an "aha" moment. And then on the other side, photography kind of influencing my cycling. It's kind of why I stopped racing, you know, I was just like, you know what? Like having a camera, getting on the bike is more fun to me than going out and training.
But photography just reminded me like, hey, there's more to this. When you finally find the thing that you love to do, you know, it just sticks. Everybody's ripping corners and everybody's looking so strong. And there's nothing necessarily bad with that. But it's just so narrow. My intuition is always to go to the moments where it has nothing to do with riding the bike. You know, the bike might be in the scene, the person might be on the bike. But there's something that I'm trying to communicate that has nothing to do with this person is going fast.
In all the images that I take, I try to show kind of like those moments that we overlook a little bit. You know, there are many different experiences that you can have on a bike. It's either like some of the most beautiful places in the country, beautiful places in the state, and some of the most beautiful places in the world. Cycling introduced me to that. And there are only an hour drive away from my house, and I would have never known. There are moments happening at all times. You know, I try to share images that I will come back to and you will actually still have that same feeling when you see it versus being kind of boring or stale, you know, 2 or 3 years from now. But being a full-time photographer, it's not something that would have been in my mind.
I play it too safe. I lucked out and I hope I still luck out. You need a little luck to be a freelance photographer. The way I envisioned my life before is just nowhere near this, and it's kind of interesting to see like how life is going now because it seems to be going in a good direction. I roam for the enjoyment. I roam because I do love cycling. I roam because I like adventure. There are just certain things that that feeling of exploration provides, you know? And you know, that's why I roam..
