Check Out Freelance Photographer Andrew Waits’ Gallery of Boondocking Portraits

!–paging_filter–pIf you’ve ever dreamed of packing up your car and living on the road, Seattle freelance photographer Andrew Waits has done a pretty good job of revealing what it might look and sound like. I had coffee with Waits this week—he’s shooting a story for our March issue (yay!)—and he revealed he was putting the finishing touches on his online gallery for “a href=”http://andrewwaits.com/“Boondock/a,” a “photographic investigation” of boondocking (which is basically free camping that spans the gamut from frugal RVing to homelessness.) He took the photos over the course of two years, in the western United States. It’s striking—but not surprising—that the California portraits, bathed in sunshine with blue-sky backdrops, have the feeling of escape or at least vacation, while the Seattle shots (several snapped in SoDo) have a dour, Last Days feeling. My favorite details are the homey personal effects—like a set of hanging fruit baskets in the cockpit of a trailer. Don’t skip the short character sketches and audio fragments./p