Some of my best photos come from poking around obscure gravel roads around Bismarck and Mandan. I grew up near some of these roads, so I’ve always had a fondness of poking around on ’em to see what I can see. That’s how I find some of the neatest old farmsteads, those ubiquitous windmills I like so much, and an occasional wellhead sticking up out in the middle of an otherwise nondescript field. My favorite roads are the ones marked “MINIMUM MAINTENANCE ROAD.” How inviting.

My weapon of choice, once it’s warm out. This is from last Thursday, which was in fact a beautiful day to be on two wheels. Note the GPS mounted on the handlebar, so I can mark interesting photo locations. I was able to mark a couple that will really be neat once the crops get a little taller. Plus I’m able to rip it up a little, and satisfy my urge to ride as well as to play with my camera. I’ve only been exploring photography since 2005, but I’ve been riding since I was four or five years old. To combine the two is joy indeed.

I love shots like this, with the combination of blue and green. I also like charming rural shots. Thus my “Fallen Farms” series of photos, for example. I don’t often have the opportunity (or patience) for many wildlife shots, but I’ve had a knack for finding a variety of scenic opportunities.

This week looks like a wash for photography or motorcycling, with a cold and wet forecast. No matter, I got plenty of neat shots last week. We’ve still got a little bit more summer left…some would jokingly say at least two weeks’ worth! When the weather cooperates, I’ll either be out in my truck or sliding two knobby tires around those gravelly corners, looking for more of those North Dakota scenes I love so much.

I took my 40,000th photo with my trusty Canon camera today. I was paying a second visit to one of the coolest locations I’ve ever visited for photos, and the first shot I took was deep within the infrastructure. For some reason my camera jumped from 39,999 to 40,001! I don’t have photo number 40,000. Weird. I do, however, have the above shot (in addition to many cooler ones). I have to make sure I have clearance to post anything else from this facility, but I’m sure this shot of the portable toilets will be okay. They’re actually pretty unremarkable, until you put them in context:

I didn’t ask how they got up there, and I don’t know how they’re going to get them down. All I know is that they look like pretty much the last place I would want to be in a blustery North Dakota winter! Brrr!

Here’s to another 40,000 photos…I wonder how long it’ll take? Now that I’m a husband and daddy, I don’t have nearly as much free time to go running around with my camera. I take lots of family pictures, though, as you can imagine. One can never take too many of those!

Last night’s clouds were a blessing and a curse, photographically. After ten full days without removing my camera from its bag, a new record as far as I can tell, I ventured out for some night snow shots. I’d seen a photo online that a guy took by moonlight, holding the shutter open for 120 seconds and catching some really neat effects. Sadly, although we have the full moon required for such a shot, it was obscured by those low, hazy clouds.

I used what I had; the clouds acted as a perfect “bounce” to reflect the lights of the city. I hoofed it out to the end of the boat dock by Merriwether’s, set up my tripod, and was overjoyed to hear the drone of a train whistle across the river. I set up just in time to do a long exposure of the train crossing the bridge – you can see how it’s streaked. The new Memorial Bridge is tucked underneath the east span of the historic NP railroad bridge, and the deep blue night sky on the horizon is sandwiched between a snowy white Missouri River and the wispy haze of the low-flying clouds. Not bad.

This photo, titled “Thresher’s Row”, is one of my favorite pieces and has received some pretty nice complements at various gallery showings. I have a huge poster-sized print of it framed here at the house. I’m not sure if I’ve ever sold one, though. Anyway, I hiked up that hill east of Napoleon in the 100 degree heat, wearing a 20+ pound camera backpack, in a full leather racing suit. My Suzuki was parked down by the sign at the bottom of the hill (and was Photoshopped out of this piece). I did a gradient to black and white on the horizon to give the sense of these old threshers marching off into history.

I recently took a photo adventure with my friend Ken one early Saturday morning. This time I drove up along the fence line and hiked a shorter distance up the hill, albeit in the snow, to take another gander at the meandering line of old machinery. I didn’t get the exact angle as the first photo, but that’s alright. I was somewhat more appropriately dressed for a short hike this time, too; although I was decked out in proper attire for strafing rural highways on my motorcycle the last time I hiked this hill, I was in the hurtlocker due to the extreme heat! So far I have yet to visit this attraction when the temperature is in a comfortable zone. That’s alright; I do it for the photos…and the story.

This was an exercise in photography the other night, before the big blizzard blew in. I set my camera up on a tripod and set it up for a long exposure (20 to 30 seconds), then ran out in front of it with a blue LED keychain. I wore black, so I didn’t show up in the picture. I made a number of different attempts at this photo, resulting in blue streaks of light that drew patterns, bounded around on the lawn, or simply traced lines across the frame. This was my favorite.

I thought of so many movie/music references I could make to title this post…Superman of course, with his crystal palace; Crystal Palace from “War Games”; “Dark Crystal” if you’re into the whole Jim Henson thing; or songs like Crystal Ship (which Duran Duran does a GREAT cover of, btw).

This photo came about when I ran out to the Garage Mahal to grab a plastic dish out of my “bachelor fridge.” I had a bowl of my notorious “Four Alarm Hamburger Noodle Bachelor Chow” in there, and it had seen better days. I figured now would be a good time to put the bowl and lid back into service. The frost that had formed on the lid, however, was begging for a photo. That’s what you see above. I took a quick shot with my macro lens while the frost started to melt, then went back to doing dishes. I wouldn’t mind seeing frost like this outside sometime, too! Remember this frosty photo?

Our family took our annual trip to Papa’s Pumpkin Patch tonight. I got a few really neat photos, but this was more about our little boys than playing with my camera. Most of my pics are actually of my family, as it should be! I did, however, spend a little time on this little clock kiosk. That’s the quandary.

I don’t know which of these shots I like more! The first one had the nice background of fall leaves. This one has the warm light of the setting sun, plus the weather vane is visible. I don’t know which I like better, so I thought I’d show you both.

In the “almost too cool for words” department, here’s my boy PJ walking hand-in-hand with his cousin Vanessa, one of his best friends. We met up with her and her family briefly before taking off and letting our two little guys investigate the pumpkins and the rest of the patch.

If you haven’t gone to Papa’s Pumpkin Patch yet, you really should! It’s bigger every year, and really cool to run around. There are plenty of good photos to be had, too…even if you don’t have the two cutest little boys in the Bismarck-Mandan area like I do.

My friend Petey often says, and I’ve adopted this as my personal motto, “Some days it’s better to be lucky than good.” Luck accounts for a great number of the finest photographs out there, since the one element completely out of the photographer’s control is the convergence of time and place to formulate the perfect moment. The photo above is one of those moments.

I’m sure many of you have noticed that magnificent full moon we have had the past few nights (Brucellosis, I’m talking about YOU). It’s a fun photographic subject, but without a telescope or a very expensive lens it’s hard to get any really impressive photographs of it. The true beauty of such a moon, however, lies in its relationship to objects below.

I was bummed about missing Sunday night’s sunset by only a short moment. As I came up south Washington Street, I noticed the moon rising in the east, and it looked quite cool. I bolted up to a hill in northwest Bismarck, and caught that nice moon in a nice relationship to the state capitol building!

It ain’t easy getting a shot like this. Monday night I tried to better it, hoping to get a photo of the moon right beside the capitol, and was unable to do so. I realized that without roof access somewhere, it’s nearly impossible to get such a shot. The reason is that one has to be far enough away from the capitol to make it appear small in the shot, having a good relationship with the moon, but also be positioned in the correct angle. Frankly, there aren’t many positions in Bismarck that fit the bill. Either there’s a power line, tree or building in the way, or the angle is just plain wrong. As it turns out, Sunday night I was lucky. Good.