From the series: “A View from The Handlebars”
A bicycle ride, especially on quiet roads, offers a rhythm that naturally slows the mind and invites reflection. With each turn of the pedals, distractions fade and awareness sharpens—allowing you to truly see the light, shapes, and details that often go unnoticed. The motion becomes meditative, grounding you in the present while opening your eyes to the beauty in everyday surroundings.
This sense of presence and perception is central to the View from the Handlebars series. Many of the color images were inspired by the artist Mark Rothko, an American abstract painter known for his signature style of large, blurred fields of solid color, often arranged as soft-edged rectangles against monochrome backgrounds. Each color palette in these rows was intentionally selected to imitate a specific Rothko painting, reflecting his emotional depth and minimalist vision while capturing the stillness and subtlety discovered during each ride.
The close-up photographs in these rows were taken with a 40mm macro lens paired with a +5 achromatic close-up filter. These images were then hand-colored in a “Rothko-esque” style to evoke the painter’s meditative intensity and emotional resonance—transforming small roadside moments into abstract expressions of mood, light, and time.
back to main page (View from the handlebars).
Vintage Nikon Lenses: From Auto-S to AI and AI-S
viewfromthehandlebars.com 