Issue No. 12 - Holiday Road. Welcome to Issue No. 12 of The Small Hours.

The photos in this issue are from an unforgettable Griswaldian road trip my son and I just finished. We drove more than 1,600 miles from Wisconsin to Utah, crossing parts of the country I'd never seen before. Our route took us from Milwaukee to Madison and on to the Wisconsin Dells for a day at Noah's Ark Waterpark. From there we headed to Iowa City, with a stop at the World's Largest Truck Stop, before driving through Des Moines, Omaha, and Lincoln to spend the night in Kearney, Nebraska. It also happened to be the only place we found still stocking Panini World Cup stickers. Leaving the endless plains of Nebraska behind, we made our way to Boulder before driving through some of the most beautiful scenery of the trip to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. We rode the alpine coaster, soaked in the hot spring pools, then continued west through the Rockies into Utah, where we finished the trip floating down the Weber River.

It was one of the most memorable trips I've ever taken and gave me a new appreciation for seeing America from behind the wheel. The photos are a collection of wide-open landscapes, roadside signs, small-town curiosities, moments of leisure, and the kinds of everyday scenes you rarely notice when you live in a city like Los Angeles. I brought six rolls of Kodak Ultramax 400, whose saturated colors felt perfectly suited to the bright summer light.

This twelfth issue also marks one full year of The Small Hours. For the past year I've carried a 35mm point-and-shoot camera almost everywhere, choosing it over my iPhone whenever I could. I still took plenty of photos with my phone, but I found myself reaching for it less often. Instead, I became more intentional about the moments I wanted to remember.

Along the way I've met fellow film camera enthusiasts, struck up conversations with strangers carrying point-and-shoots, become friends with the people at my local lab, and fallen back in love with the imperfections of film photography.

When I started this project, my goal was simply to do it for a year. That year is now complete, but I don't think I'm finished. Instagram has become a place I enjoy less and less, while The Small Hours has become exactly what I hoped it would be: a quiet place to slow down, pay attention, and share photographs on my own terms.