I tell me students to avoid taking photos through windows of moving vehicles. After all, who wants to see bug splats? So why did I keep driving as I snapped this photo with my iPhone? I have not good answer other than I guess I don't always practice what I preach.
I don't know the name of this plant, which was flourishing in Bill and Cathy Zs' garden, but I do know that it fed my penchant for green things with fascinating texture.
There's something about looking at close-ups of flowers that makes me count. And in this flower, five seems to be the recurring number.
This is the 41' sailboat we chartered in June in the British Virgin Islands. It had a few more creature comforts than my 25' boat, including hot & cold running water, refrigeration and three small, private bedrooms. But I still like my boat better. :-)
My Garmin Nuvi said the elevation at this point on Mauna Kea in Hawaii was 13,910' though officially, I don't think it is quite that high. What's amazing about Mauna Kea is that you can drive all of the way to the top in your car. It was cold and windy up there and there was snow, which we South Dakotans were trying to escape the December we were visiting our son Jon on the Big Island.
It's been damn hot and dry in South Dakota and so I thought this rather cheesy posed photo an ornamental ball resting on a frost covered pine tree would be just the right medicine. In the winter, South Dakotans complain about the snow and cold. And in the summer we complain about the heat. But we do manage to survive . . .
My friend Scott P and I had spent a great week on my sailboat on Lake Oahe in South Dakota. It was incredibly hot but that was OK with us. We had made our way back to the marina and were mostly packed and ready to leave when we decided to go out for one short attempt at fishing. And in a short time, Scott had landed this 10-12 pound northern. I think it helped make Scott P's week.Most people avoid catching northern on Lake Oahe but Scott seeks them out. He says they are more fun to catch than walleye, and they are just as good to eat, if not better, than walleye. But you've got to know how to clean them, which Scott does.I was "netman" on this fish and netting a big fish isn't easy. In fact, earlier in the week I had missed netting two pretty good sized northerns. So I guess landing this fish helped make my week, too.
Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, has a lot more than 99 steps given that it seems to perch on the hillside above the Caribbean Sea. These steps, though, are a few of a famous stretch of stairs known as the "99 Steps." It was a sultry summer day when Deb and I were walking these stairs and so I guess we burned a few extra calories.
Deb and I ate twice at this establishment in Road Town on the Island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. We liked the character and we also appreciated stepping into the air conditioning after a mile walk for the B&B we were staying at. And the food was good, too. My favorite: conch stew.
Not counting the parts of daisies on edges of this photo, there really are three daisies in this photo. "Really?!" you say. Really. This is a layered HDR photo that I made (not took) with my Canon 5D Mark III. It has HDR capacity built in. The things you can do with the new-fangled cameras. . .Incidentally, the title of this post pays homage to the famous scene in Stanley Kubrick's fiLm "2001: A Space Odyssey," where an astronaut "kills" HAL, the on-board computer. (HAL, by the way, is an acronym that is only one letter away from IBM. Coincidence?).When that film came out in 1968, 2001 seemed so far away. And now it's 2012 and we have cameras that are smarter than those who use them. Like me and my 5DIII. . .
What you see in this photo is a pile of debris in the middle of a cornfield. But what I see is much more, for this pile is all that remains of a farmstead north of Watertown, South Dakota, that had become for me a place of photographic pilgrimage.This farmstead had an old house, a fairly large barn and two other out buildings that were part of the farming operation years ago. The buildings were subjects hundreds of photos I have taken. It was also what I called "the north studio," because I took many of my senior portrait subjects to this location due to its wealth of good locations for pictures. More recently, I took some of my LATI photo students there to share this great location. The photos they took are likely the last photos that were taken of this South Dakota relic.The group Kansas was right when they sang that "Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky." And so I suppose it was inevitable that an abandoned farm would be bulldozed and turned into crop land. But I feel like I've lost a friend. This place had an important place in my personal history and it had a soul that had become part of my soul.But at least I have the photos. . . .
Every once and a while I go back a year or two in my photo collection to see if there isn't something I've neglected. Given that I take quite a few photos and never throw anything away, "neglect" is a word that is a little too kind for how I treat my old photos.Anyway, here's one that I had considered for submission to a small gallery that decorates the fireplace room in the student center at Lake Area Technical Institute, where I teach photography. I eventually found something I liked better but today I am resurrecting it.As with many of my photos, this one involves strong lines and light, obvious texture and a control of depth of field. A fence post and fencing are mundane subjects in rural South Dakota, but if captured right they can be interesting and evocative.