07-27-12 Disaster Drill

Under normal circumstances, I don't think the hospital would let a photographer in to ER to photography a patient, who, in this case, seems to have a big twisted bolt in her belly. But this was only a drill. It was conducted by a variety of police and rescue units in our area back in April.It started at the airport but I volunteered to ride on the first ambulance to leave, in part because the hospital part of this exercise seemed interesting and in part because it was freezing cold the day of the drill and the ambulance looked warm and inviting. :-)

07-26-12 Morning Rain

07-25-12 Black Eyed Susans

07-24-12 Depth of Field

07-23-12 Patterns

Last in a series of wheat photos.

07-22-12 Glorious

Sometimes, when I'm out at Lake Oahe in central South Dakota, I don't go sailing. On this particular morning, I woke up well before sunrise and at first light saw that there were some clouds off in the east that looked promising. So I packed up my camera gear and went driving. I ended up on the bluffs above the Little Bend area - an area I have been to many times before.It may seem obvious but a sunrise photo isn't about the sun - that looks pretty much the same every time. It's about the clouds, the terrain and the atmosphere. And in all of these cases, I got what I was looking for.This photo, incidentally, is an HDR photo, which means that it's really two or three photos sandwiched together into one. I experimented with a process that gives this photo a bit of a surreal look. Compositionally, this photo does what a landscape photo should do: there is something in the foreground, the middle ground and in the back ground.I wish you could have been with me when I took this photo. It was an amazing moment in an very special place.Canon 5DIII f/8.0 1/250 ISO400 19mm

07-21-12 Rain Drenched

I have been known to "fake" rain drops by spraying leaves and petals of my garden subjects. But these drops are real: it actually rained the other morning!

07-20-12 Star Gazing

It hard not to notice the star gazer lilies, which just bloomed a few days ago.

07-19-12 Amber Waves

4th in a series.

07-18-12 Golden Braids

This is third in a series of wheat, this time a close view of what comprises a generally nondescript golden field of wheat.

07-17-12 Spring Wheat

Some would say that if you've seen one wheat field, you've seen them all. And from a distance that's probably true. But I'm afraid my quest for good wheat photos yesterday didn't satisfy me. So I went out again this morning looking again for the perfect wheat photo opportunity. I was hoping for better light today and I got it. Generally, it was overcast but the sun was working to push its way through occasional soft spots in the morning clouds. And so I got the perfect back lighting from the biggest soft box on earth.I took over 200 photos during the 30 minutes I spent at this particular field. I'll admit that I was practicing a little "spray and pray" photography because a gusty breeze was causing the heavy heads of wheat to move around. And since I was using a very narrow field of focus (low f-stop number), I wanted to be sure I had some focused photos when I got home.Towards the end of my shoot, Bret H., the field's owner, drove up and stopped. I walked over to his truck with my camera and told him that I couldn't resist taking photographs of his amazing crop. He simply smiled. When I showed him a photo I had just taken and said, "You're not a farmer; you're an artist," he smiled some more.If you haven't stopped by a mature wheat field and studied the plant that in some ways was and still is the foundation of western civilization, it's time you did. The whispy "hairs" and the braid-like grains of wheat truly are a work of art.

07-16-12 Amber Waves

When I went driving this morning in search of something to photograph, I figured that the perfect wheat field would likely draw me like a magnet. I am fascinated by bare, black fields that turn to green and then to beautiful yellow-gold. And we can't help but notice the harvest of wheat because the huge red or green machines that work the fields contrast so distinctly with the mature crop.But who has the time or interest to park and take a closer look at the grain? I would guess the farmer would. And so does the photographer, who, as I've said so many times in this blog, has the power to get you, the viewer, to take a closer look. And it is worth the time. . .