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Hi my name is Nathan and this is my mobile studio camper wagon adventure bus.
I'm a professional Graphic Designer.
That's what I studied but I'm also a photographer. I specialize in photo
manipulation and surrealism photography and it's a very hands-on approach.
There's a lot of prop building involved like I did this one photo where it looks
like the lake has been drained by a giant plug. Each photo is its own you
know huge project and then with the bus I'm able to drive to very remote
locations and still be able to create.
When I found out my dad was having a kidney transplant my sister and I both
quit our jobs and moved back in with our parents to be there for support.
I had nothing but time on my hands. I wasn't working for anybody. I had money
saved and I kind of realized that this is a window of opportunity that
I'll just I'll never get again so my dad's a lot healthier now. This past year
has been amazing. I've started my own business. I built the bus and now I'm
getting ready to start using it and gonna be using it in British Columbia.
2006 Ford e450 Super Duty has about 97 thousand clicks on it. She runs really
smooth. I really want to get one of those tacky hood scoop things from Canadian
Tire cause it adds like 30 horsepower. It came white which was great
and I don't really know what I want to paint it yet so stay tuned for that. I
did add a nice little black trim along the bottom it was just kind of hiding
imperfections and I think overall it looks really good.
On the inside of this door I put a little basketball net because I think
it's cool. Probably should have updated that but if
you're ever doing something outside I don't know hosting some kind of event or
I want to get people's attention it's a great way to do it. Keeping some sports
equipment in that little shelf there you can aye. I haven't really done too much of
the exterior but I do plan on putting a small roof deck on the top probably have
a ladder of some kind right around here so you can climb up to the roof and
enjoy the sunset.
This is the kitchen area now because I don't live in here full-time
my needs are a bit different. I don't have the sink installed just yet but
what I've used for that is just an old tin bucket and I'm gonna turn into a
sink. These are just little wooden crates. I bought a bunch of them and just stained
them myself and I'm making nice little drawers out of them. I built up this nice
little half wall. It helps keep the bus a bit warmer and I'm also planning on
hanging a bunch of the you know kitchen utensils pans stuff like that. Have these
nice little cupboards up here just additional storage. I got these at
Habitat for Humanity bought those for $1 each.
They're like $80 doors at Home Depot. Here is just where I keep most of my
camera gear, chalkboard paint over the cabinet doors that locks as well. Right
now I have a two battery setup. I have a buddy of mine who's an
electrician do all this stuff for me and he ran me through the numbers how much
power I'm getting for my setup. Right over my head I did not understand a word so I
plug things in and they work. I really need to take time to learn all that
stuff but I have enough on my plate right now. I also have an inverter tucked
under here it's 1500 watt which I've been informed is not very much so that's
another thing I'm gonna have to upgrade. I got two solar panels on the roof about
100 watt each. It's not very much but it works for what I need right now.
I do plan on upgrading that. I have a Renergy controller on the side here
that tells me how much power I have and what's going on on the roof. During the
summer and spring people are constantly doing landscaping in their backyard
getting rid of old fences, old decks, whatever. It's usually treated, it looks
great, it's aged so a lot of the wood in this bus I got for free. All the ceiling
wood that you see here it's all old cedar. The skeleton of the bus looked
pretty cool. I completely took all the sheet metal out and I chopped up a bunch
of old cedar from someone's deck nice and thin and I reglued them back up
there. I put a little bit of insulation in between that gave me not only extra
headroom but it gave me a really cool aesthetic then I just ran over all the
beams with a nice dark gray paint. I had some dents
in the roof so I actually built this part down and I just used a nice beige
pine, screwed them right into the beams itself. If you have a lot of these beige
tones in the darker pieces of wood so kind of color echoes throughout the bus.
I plan on putting a skylight or some kind of hatch that you can open up and
climb through. I also plan on building a small deck on the roof so that you can
climb up here and go on to the deck. I would say about 90% of this booth is
made from wood that I got for free so this part here was someone's deck that I
just chopped up and made a table out of it.
These were fence posts from someone else's backyard and put these little
crates here and keep all my tools in there and then I just keep all my
vacuum accessories there. This is a futon cushion that I trimmed off a little bit
because it was too long but this actually slides out into a decent sized
bed just like that. This is one of the work areas. A lot of the projects I do is
very hands-on so I just keep you know my various tapes and stuff like that. You'll
notice I have a bunch of different crates along the shelves here kind of
working out where is the best spot to keep various things so various backdrops
towels and linens in here and I could just move this aside and slide the chair
underneath here and it adds an extra little workspace. This is a desk I got
off of Kijiji it was only ten bucks super lightweight and easy to kind of
manipulate here. So you know sketching pencils, tape. When you're
driving this stuff goes flying everywhere so just put those latches on.
I just have props laying around everywhere like this is a pin
that I made like a Google pin so I did a few projects with that. This is another
project that I'm working on so I'm photoshopping a giant ship into this
bottle and I'm gonna make it look like you know this washed up on shore and
like the captain and his crew escaped essentially. So yeah I have a bunch of
random items in here that if you look at it doesn't really make sense but it's
probably for an art project. I just bought chalkboard paint it was
like $30 and I got like this giant board and I custom cut it so that you can you
know draw you know whatever you want on it. This
is a good little work table that I put my computer here and I also have a
little backdrop that I have hidden up at the top there when you're doing product
shoots you don't actually need that much space especially if there are smaller
objects so when I'm working remotely I still have the ability to shoot stuff
like that and it's a pretty long backdrop it stretches out all the way if
I need and this just rolls back up like that.
I keep various tripods and stuff up here and probably my most recent and most
favorite addition to the bus is this little projector system that I made. I
built this little platform and this hangs so the chains at the back are
shorter and the chains at the front are longer just to give it a bit of a
sloping angle. This is just black out fabric that I bought for about 15 bucks.
It's perfect for projector screens. For some reason screens are like $200 it
just makes no sense. That's just fabric so put little eyelets in the corners
there so that it can hang up on the bottom. Here I just put a tube sewed a
little pocket so that it just keeps it nice and straight and gives it some
structure. Bought a bunch of rope for about 10-15 bucks got a nice roll of it
went a long way as you can see there's a bunch of curtain holders made out of
rope. In this case they actually hold those rods up and divide the curtains
from passing as well. I used rope to essentially create
shelves in a way. I could just kind of hang stuff off here. I usually hang
various fabrics and backdrops or whatever I need to hang off that. I
thought of this idea in Home Depot that it would be cool to have columns or
pillars in the bus. It's just so unnecessary so naturally I had to have
it. I have them here. This was a part of someone's deck that I got for free so
nice aged wood there. I mean you could see in the kitchen I used the same piece
of wood. I just cut up in different pieces. Massive pillars here again with
the rope creating shelving out of essentially nothing so yeah completely
unnecessary so that's why I put them in. I've been fortunate enough to find a
bunch of really nice light fixtures like this at really dirt cheap prices so I
just kind of run the wire up along the beam so that's nice and clean and
you got like this nice really warm lighting that comes from it so I have
another matching one in the kitchen and then these match as well. These are all
bought at discount and I love the warm light of it. It takes a little bit more energy
but I don't care. It looks good. One thing that I learned in graphic design school
was make sure something works before you make it look good. When I first started
building I did the exact opposite. Okay, I went straight for the aesthetic. I made
sure everything looked pretty and then I had to kind of dial it back, certainly
paid for it, but in the end I'm really happy with the result.
The biggest lesson I've learned hands down is patience. There's so many things
I want to do so quickly and that's when I started making mistakes and I was
actually moving further away from my goal so just take your time and really
map out the best way to do things and just you'll get there eventually just
just stick with it. I like the saying that "yesterday you
said tomorrow." That's something that I'm trying to live more and more by. Stop
creating excuses for the things that you want to do and just they're a lot less
scarier than you think. Once you get started it's a lot easier to go for the
things that you've always want to do. It's just buying the bus is the hardest step.
We are anchored off of the home island of Odysseus which is modern-day
Kefalonia in Greece which is arguably Homers Ithaca. Arriving under sail as is
the ancient Greek way we cross the Ionian Sea from Anti-paxos after picking
up our Oru Kayaks in Corfu. These kayaks are the perfect addition to our
adventure gear because they are incredibly lightweight and they pack
down into a pack that fits on your back.
These Oru Kayaks allow us to explore closer to the exquisite coastline
without the disrupting experience of a combustion engine from our fossil fuel
burning dinghy. Oru Kayaks are a pleasure to paddle and they have
increased my exploration joy by at least five points. When you're sitting low in
the water silently ghosting along observing the magnificence around you a
feeling of loving wonder is inevitable. Explore our home planet in an immersive
integrated way and enjoy the serenity.
Use the link in the description to order
your very own origami Oru Kayak and get out there and explore.