BRIAN LIPPS
Brian Lipps has been known to wear a beard better than any longshoreman or lumberjack I’ve ever met. And fittingly, he has claimed the top prize at the annual Ice Beard Competition—Sundance, Utah; three years running. Sometimes he takes nasty spills on his mountain bike in the Rockies and patches up his wounds with duct tape and t-shirts because the hospital is too far away and “that’s what hydrogen peroxide is for.” Ask to see the scar. I’ve witnessed him drive from Los Angeles to Albuquerque without stopping, even for gas, somehow. The man drinks Black and Tans out of nationalistic principal and typically, he’ll buy you one too. If you follow him into the wilderness take heed, because many an adventurer has been left limping in attempts to keep up with his intrepidity. But he’ll gladly build you a splint. He is a photographer of the rare mettle to shoot the way he lives. And that world inside of his lens is a daring world that pleads for you to come along, to see what is really out there. The images he makes convey that unbridled energy hanging just behind a mundane façade of the everyday. Finding the carnivorous beauty of the real with a witty twist. Showing us the world as we wish we could live and as Lipps actually does. Yet he is not just an idea or a philosophy, he is a professionally trained photographer, graduating from the prestigious Brooks Institute of Photography. Currently residing in, Los Angeles; Lipps is always ready to capture the adventure all around us.
Written by Jason Oppliger
WANDERINGS
Whether it is your mind, body, or soul that wanders there is always an adventure to be had, an African Safari, your back yard, or simply using some good old fashion imagination. Wandering helps me find inspiration I begin to look at things in a new light. The same mundane place can become new and lively after a good wander. LippsPhoto Wanderings is dedicated to finding and sharing this inspiration, and to J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem, “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.” As a result Wanderings is a journey into a softer more organic fragment of my character. My hope is that my passions, inspirations, and wanderings deepen your own. The photos posted here may not be particularly portfolio worthy but nonetheless should be seen. They tell a story, after all a picture is worth a thousand words. That is unless you’re my 10th grade English Teacher, but that is a whole other story write me if you want to here about that one.
