One of my favorite things about the Few & Far Between group project LUCEO is that people are so proud that we came to their small town to photograph them and they are so welcoming and generous. From the West leg of our trip in August, five of us went from town to town across Wyoming and beyond in an RV. Our first stop was in Chugwater, Wyoming, a beautiful small town in a valley between bluffs. The most recent population count I can find for Chugwater list the town as having 244 residents.

Each town has been researched before we have arrived. We often have already made contacts in each town and every LUCEO members is off for a day or two spending their time with a rancher, or family, for example. My job in Chugwater was to be the person who wandered the town, instead of having a specific contact. I actually love feature hunting so I wandered block after block of the centralized residences and went into the few businesses and talked to people and made photos. I went into the school, though it was still summer break, into Chugwater Chili, a local business that ships chili around the world, into the soda shop where the local men gather twice a day for coffee, into an empty church with unlocked doors. I spotted a sign inside the school about summer tee ball and knew I had to wander to the field that afternoon because, as luck would have it, a game was happening that evening.

The late afternoon light in Chugwater is like evening light by the ocean–it’s warm and beautiful. First game is kids only, second game is for their parents as the kids play tag or jump rope on the side of the field. It was only our first full day shooting as a group in the town, but as the stands lined with a dozen residents, many recognized me or had met other LUCEO members throughout the day. In a town that small, 5 strangers with cameras don’t go unnoticed.

It felt like everything came together perfectly: it’s not easy to find a group of people together in a small town on a random week day, especially children, and that coupled with the beautiful light, made this feel like the perfect second day of our trip and a great start for our journey.

I took the most photos of Allie because I thought she was so beautiful– with her light blue eyes, fair skin and freckles. I also appreciated her distractions during the tee ball game–I played on two teams, both very briefly as a girl, and I remember people having to snap me out of drawing in the sand during my soccer practices. It was so cool to see so many members of the community come together and cheer each other on.

As the sun dropped lower, I decided it was time to walk across town back to the RV where each of us was slowly making our way back to after long days of taking photos. We made dinner on the tiny stove, feasted, shared stories about who we’d met and where we would go the next day, then downloaded photos, started editing, preparing to do it all again tomorrow.

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To see an edit of Few & Far Between, a gallery is here.

A Case Study is on our commercial page here.

A one-of-a-kind travelogue book from this trip is available in our store here. The book sold! Yay!

And an article in The New York Times Lens Blog, titled “More Than a Roadtrip,” about this project can be seen here.

You can also see a selection of images accompanied with their backstory by Matt Eich here and David Walter Banks here.

One of my favorite things about the Few & Far Between group project LUCEO is that people are so proud that we came to their small town to photograph them and they are so welcoming and generous. From the West leg of our trip in August, five of us went from town to town ...